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If some writers experience an imperial period, during which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four long, gratifying novels, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were expansive, witty, big-hearted novels, linking figures he calls “outsiders” to societal topics from feminism to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, except in size. His most recent work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in prior works (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page script in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with care but still a faint glimmer of hope, which shines stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s very best novels, taking place mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

The book is a failure from a author who previously gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, humor and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the topics that were turning into repetitive patterns in his novels: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel starts in the made-up community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt 14-year-old ward the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays familiar: still addicted to anesthetic, respected by his caregivers, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these opening scenes.

The Winslows worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young Jewish girl understand her place?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist armed group whose “goal was to defend Jewish towns from opposition” and which would subsequently form the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are huge subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the draft notice through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic designation (the animal, recall Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s passim).

He is a duller figure than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary players, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a few bullies get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his points, foreshadowed plot developments and enabled them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before taking them to completion in long, surprising, entertaining moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: remember the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In this novel, a key character loses an limb – but we only find out 30 pages before the conclusion.

She reappears in the final part in the story, but only with a final impression of ending the story. We never discover the full story of her time in the region. The book is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this novel – still holds up excellently, 40 years on. So read that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but 12 times as great.