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If some authors enjoy an imperial era, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s extended through a series of several fat, gratifying books, from his 1978 success Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were rich, humorous, big-hearted novels, linking figures he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in size. His last book, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in previous works (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the heart to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with care but still a faint spark of hope, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages long – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s finest books, set mostly in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with colour, comedy and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a major book because it left behind the themes that were evolving into annoying tics in his novels: grappling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome 14-year-old foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several generations prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: still using ether, beloved by his staff, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these early scenes.

The family fret about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist militant force whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not really about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s additionally not about the main character. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the family's children, and gives birth to a baby boy, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both common and distinct. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the dog's name, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller character than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary players, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are flat also. There are several amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a support and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is is not the difficulty. He has consistently repeated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to gather in the reader’s mind before leading them to completion in extended, shocking, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the plot. In this novel, a key person is deprived of an arm – but we only learn 30 pages the conclusion.

She reappears in the final part in the book, but merely with a last-minute sense of wrapping things up. We do not learn the complete story of her time in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading together with this work – even now holds up excellently, after forty years. So pick up that in its place: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.