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If certain writers have an imperial era, where they reach the heights time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four long, rewarding books, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were rich, funny, warm novels, tying characters he calls “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to termination.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, aside from in word count. His previous book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier books (inability to speak, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy film script in the heart to extend it – as if filler were needed.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which shines stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s finest works, located primarily in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with colour, humor and an total empathy. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the themes that were turning into repetitive habits in his works: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book starts in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a few years ahead of the action of Cider House, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then dependent on the drug, respected by his nurses, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is limited to these opening parts.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish girl find herself?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary force whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the core of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not about Esther. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this novel is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful title (the animal, remember the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller persona than Esther hinted to be, and the minor players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are underdeveloped too. There are a few amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has always repeated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before taking them to completion in extended, surprising, amusing scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In this novel, a key figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we just learn thirty pages the end.

Esther comes back late in the novel, but merely with a final impression of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it in parallel to this work – even now holds up wonderfully, after forty years. So choose it as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as great.