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If certain novelists enjoy an golden era, in which they hit the summit time after time, then American writer John Irving’s extended through a run of four long, rewarding novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, humorous, compassionate books, linking characters he describes as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, save in page length. His last book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had examined better in previous works (inability to speak, dwarfism, gender identity), with a lengthy film script in the center to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

Thus we come to a latest Irving with care but still a tiny flame of hope, which shines hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s finest works, taking place largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and acceptance with colour, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the themes that were turning into repetitive habits in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel begins in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations before the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch stays recognisable: even then addicted to ether, adored by his staff, beginning every talk with “In this place...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these initial sections.

The couple fret about parenting Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are massive subjects to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on the titular figure. For motivations that must relate to narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the family's offspring, and bears to a son, the boy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a canine with a meaningful name (the animal, remember Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a few thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a delicate novelist, but that is not the problem. He has always restated his points, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to completion in extended, surprising, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those absences resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central figure loses an arm – but we merely discover thirty pages the end.

She returns in the final part in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of ending the story. We not once do find out the full story of her time in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this book – even now remains excellently, four decades later. So choose that in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but far as great.