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If a few authors have an golden phase, where they hit the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four substantial, gratifying books, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were expansive, funny, big-hearted works, connecting characters he describes as “outliers” to societal topics from women's rights to termination.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, except in page length. His last novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had explored more skillfully in earlier books (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if filler were required.

Thus we look at a latest Irving with caution but still a small flame of hope, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, set primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored termination and belonging with vibrancy, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the topics that were becoming tiresome habits in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

Queen Esther starts in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old ward the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a few years prior to the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then dependent on the drug, respected by his caregivers, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is restricted to these early parts.

The Winslows worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish female discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will become part of Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

Those are enormous subjects to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not really concerning Esther. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the couple's children, and gives birth to a son, the boy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this story is the boy's narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both common and distinct. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, remember Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller figure than Esther promised to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are underdeveloped too. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is not the issue. He has always reiterated his arguments, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, amusing scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a central figure loses an limb – but we only learn thirty pages the conclusion.

The protagonist returns late in the novel, but merely with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We never do find out the complete story of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this novel – yet holds up beautifully, four decades later. So choose the earlier work instead: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as great.