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If a few writers have an peak phase, where they reach the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a series of several fat, rewarding books, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were expansive, witty, warm works, tying characters he calls “outliers” to societal topics from women's rights to termination.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, except in size. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had explored more effectively in earlier books (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with caution but still a small spark of hope, which shines hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages long – “goes back to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier works, taking place largely in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who once gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the themes that were evolving into repetitive habits in his works: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther begins in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple take in teenage ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the events of Cider House, yet Dr Larch is still recognisable: still addicted to ether, respected by his caregivers, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is confined to these initial parts.

The couple are concerned about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “goal was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not actually about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For motivations that must relate to plot engineering, Esther turns into a substitute parent for one more of the Winslows’ children, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the city; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant title (the animal, remember Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane character than Esther promised to be, and the minor characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a few bullies get beaten with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced writer, but that is is not the issue. He has always reiterated his ideas, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to gather in the audience's mind before bringing them to resolution in long, shocking, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a central figure loses an limb – but we just learn thirty pages the finish.

Esther returns in the final part in the novel, but only with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We never discover the full story of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a writer who once gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it in parallel to this novel – still stands up excellently, four decades later. So read the earlier work in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but 12 times as good.