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If some novelists experience an peak era, during which they reach the summit consistently, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. These were expansive, humorous, compassionate books, connecting characters he calls “misfits” to cultural themes from feminism to termination.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing returns, save in page length. His last novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in previous novels (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy script in the heart to extend it – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we look at a recent Irving with care but still a tiny flame of expectation, which burns hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s finest works, located primarily in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, comedy and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a significant book because it moved past the subjects that were evolving into tiresome habits in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book begins in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in young orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a a number of decades ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still familiar: already dependent on anesthetic, respected by his nurses, opening every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is restricted to these opening scenes.

The Winslows worry about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to defend Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are enormous topics to address, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the family's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the bulk of this novel is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both regular and specific. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s talk of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a significant name (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a less interesting figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor characters, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are a few enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a couple of thugs get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is is not the problem. He has always reiterated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to gather in the viewer's mind before leading them to fruition in lengthy, surprising, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the tongue in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we only learn thirty pages later the finish.

She reappears late in the story, but merely with a final feeling of concluding. We never do find out the entire account of her time in the region. This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this book – yet stands up excellently, four decades later. So read the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but 12 times as enjoyable.