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If some authors have an golden era, during which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several substantial, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, humorous, big-hearted novels, connecting characters he refers to as “outliers” to societal topics from women's rights to termination.

After Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, save in size. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had examined more effectively in previous books (inability to speak, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of expectation, which burns brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s top-tier books, set largely in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with colour, comedy and an total understanding. And it was a major book because it abandoned the topics that were evolving into annoying tics in his works: wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel starts in the made-up community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome 14-year-old foundling the title character from the orphanage. We are a several years before the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still identifiable: still dependent on ether, adored by his caregivers, starting every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist militant force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would eventually establish the basis of the IDF.

Those are massive topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both common and distinct. Jimmy moves to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of evading the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the dog's name, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller persona than the heroine promised to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional as well. There are some amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a handful of ruffians get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is isn't the issue. He has always restated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to build up in the viewer's imagination before taking them to fruition in extended, surprising, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: remember the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those losses echo through the story. In this novel, a central person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages the end.

She returns late in the novel, but only with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We never discover the entire narrative of her life in the region. This novel is a letdown from a author who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that Cider House – I reread it together with this book – even now remains wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as great.