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If certain authors experience an imperial era, during which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a run of four long, gratifying works, from his 1978 hit Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, witty, big-hearted books, linking protagonists he describes as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to termination.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining results, save in size. His last novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had delved into better in prior works (inability to speak, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with caution but still a faint flame of expectation, which shines hotter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, taking place largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with colour, humor and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major work because it left behind the themes that were evolving into annoying patterns in his works: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book starts in the imaginary village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a several years ahead of the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still identifiable: already using the drug, adored by his staff, beginning every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in this novel is confined to these early scenes.

The family are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young Jewish girl find herself?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the core of the IDF.

Such are massive themes to take on, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not focused on the main character. For reasons that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the couple's daughters, and gives birth to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is the boy's narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both common and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful title (the animal, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some amusing episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate author, but that is is not the difficulty. He has always reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to gather in the audience's mind before bringing them to fruition in long, shocking, amusing moments. For instance, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to be lost: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the story. In the book, a central character loses an arm – but we just discover thirty pages the end.

The protagonist comes back late in the novel, but merely with a final impression of concluding. We not once learn the full narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this work – still holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as great.