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If a few authors have an peak era, where they achieve the heights consistently, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, gratifying works, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were rich, witty, warm works, linking characters he calls “outsiders” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining results, aside from in size. His previous novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more effectively in prior novels (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page script in the center to pad it out – as if filler were required.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a small glimmer of optimism, which burns stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s finest works, taking place mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and identity with richness, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a major work because it abandoned the subjects that were turning into tiresome patterns in his novels: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel opens in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a few decades ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch is still recognisable: still addicted to anesthetic, adored by his nurses, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in the book is limited to these initial sections.

The couple fret about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge topics to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a son, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both regular and specific. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic title (the dog's name, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane figure than the heroine suggested to be, and the supporting players, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are flat too. There are a few nice episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a couple of thugs get beaten with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced novelist, but that is not the issue. He has consistently restated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and allowed them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to completion in long, surprising, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to be lost: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we merely find out 30 pages later the end.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the novel, but only with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We never discover the entire narrative of her life in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading together with this novel – even now holds up wonderfully, after forty years. So read the earlier work instead: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but 12 times as enjoyable.