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If a few writers enjoy an imperial era, during which they reach the heights consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a run of several fat, gratifying works, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were generous, funny, compassionate works, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to social issues from feminism to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, aside from in page length. His last novel, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages of topics Irving had explored more effectively in earlier works (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were needed.

So we come to a new Irving with caution but still a small spark of optimism, which shines stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s very best novels, located largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

This novel is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving discussed termination and acceptance with colour, wit and an total empathy. And it was a major novel because it moved past the themes that were evolving into repetitive patterns in his books: grappling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

Queen Esther begins in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young foundling the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations before the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor remains familiar: still addicted to the drug, adored by his staff, starting every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these initial parts.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a young Jewish girl discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “mission was to defend Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are massive topics to take on, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s still more upsetting that it’s likewise not focused on the titular figure. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the family's offspring, and bears to a male child, James, in World War II era – and the majority of this story is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (Owen Meany); a pet with a meaningful designation (the animal, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

He is a duller figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are flat too. There are a few enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a couple of thugs get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced writer, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's mind before taking them to completion in long, shocking, amusing scenes. For example, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to disappear: recall the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the story. In the book, a key person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we just learn thirty pages before the end.

Esther returns in the final part in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We not once do find out the entire account of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this novel – yet remains beautifully, four decades later. So choose it as an alternative: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as enjoyable.