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If certain authors enjoy an peak era, in which they reach the pinnacle time after time, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a series of several long, satisfying works, from his late-seventies hit Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, witty, big-hearted works, connecting figures he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning outcomes, except in word count. His most recent novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had examined better in earlier works (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if padding were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a faint flame of expectation, which burns stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is part of Irving’s very best books, located mostly in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a writer who once gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with colour, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important work because it abandoned the themes that were evolving into tiresome habits in his novels: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a few decades prior to the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays recognisable: already dependent on anesthetic, respected by his nurses, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these early sections.

The Winslows are concerned about raising Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will join the Haganah, the Zionist militant force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later become the foundation of the Israel's military.

Such are massive themes to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For motivations that must connect to narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the family's children, and bears to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both regular and distinct. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful designation (the dog's name, remember the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

He is a duller figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are several enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle author, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly reiterated his arguments, hinted at narrative turns and let them to gather in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to completion in long, jarring, funny moments. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the story. In the book, a key character loses an arm – but we just find out 30 pages before the end.

She comes back late in the book, but just with a last-minute feeling of wrapping things up. We never learn the complete story of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it together with this work – even now remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up that instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as good.