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If some writers enjoy an golden era, where they hit the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of four substantial, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, humorous, warm books, connecting protagonists he calls “misfits” to societal topics from feminism to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, aside from in size. His most recent work, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of themes Irving had delved into better in prior books (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a 200-page script in the center to extend it – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a faint glimmer of expectation, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, located largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with richness, humor and an total empathy. And it was a major novel because it moved past the subjects that were turning into tiresome habits in his books: wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book opens in the made-up town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor remains familiar: even then using ether, adored by his caregivers, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is restricted to these early scenes.

The Winslows are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently become the core of the IDF.

These are huge subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a substitute parent for a different of the family's offspring, and bears to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the lion's share of this book is Jimmy’s story.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a significant name (the dog's name, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

He is a duller character than Esther suggested to be, and the minor figures, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a couple of ruffians get beaten with a support and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate author, but that is not the difficulty. He has always reiterated his points, telegraphed story twists and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in extended, shocking, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to disappear: remember the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a key person suffers the loss of an arm – but we merely find out thirty pages the conclusion.

She comes back in the final part in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We not once discover the entire story of her time in the region. This novel is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it alongside this book – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So choose it instead: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.