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If certain authors have an golden era, during which they hit the heights consistently, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four long, rewarding books, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were generous, funny, compassionate works, linking protagonists he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, save in page length. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of subjects Irving had delved into more skillfully in previous novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were needed.

Thus we approach a new Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which burns hotter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s finest novels, taking place largely in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

This novel is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and acceptance with vibrancy, humor and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the subjects that were becoming annoying tics in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel opens in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few decades ahead of the storyline of Cider House, yet the doctor remains recognisable: already addicted to ether, beloved by his staff, beginning every talk with “In this place...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these opening sections.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will become part of the Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would subsequently become the basis of the IDF.

Those are massive subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not about Esther. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a baby boy, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this book is his story.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy moves to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the animal, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller figure than Esther promised to be, and the supporting players, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a few bullies get battered with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate author, but that is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to gather in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to resolution in long, surprising, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a key person is deprived of an limb – but we only learn 30 pages later the end.

The protagonist comes back toward the end in the book, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We do not learn the complete account of her time in the region. The book is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it together with this book – yet holds up excellently, after forty years. So choose the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.