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If a few authors experience an imperial period, in which they hit the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four long, satisfying works, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were rich, witty, warm works, linking figures he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in word count. His last work, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had explored more skillfully in previous works (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page film script in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Therefore we look at a latest Irving with reservation but still a faint flame of expectation, which shines stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s very best books, located largely in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the subjects that were evolving into repetitive patterns in his works: grappling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old foundling Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations before the action of Cider House, yet the doctor is still familiar: already addicted to ether, adored by his nurses, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is restricted to these opening sections.

The couple fret about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will become part of Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant group whose “purpose was to protect Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

Those are massive topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the family's daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this story is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s discussion of evading the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, meet the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

He is a more mundane persona than the heroine promised to be, and the supporting characters, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are flat as well. There are some amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a couple of ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is is not the problem. He has always repeated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before leading them to fruition in extended, jarring, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to disappear: remember the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the plot. In this novel, a major person is deprived of an arm – but we just learn 30 pages before the conclusion.

She comes back toward the end in the novel, but just with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We not once do find out the full account of her experiences in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a letdown from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading in parallel to this work – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as good.