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If a few authors experience an peak era, in which they achieve the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying works, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, funny, compassionate works, linking protagonists he refers to as “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in word count. His previous work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined better in earlier books (mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page script in the center to extend it – as if filler were necessary.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint glimmer of hope, which glows stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s very best books, located primarily in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and acceptance with colour, humor and an total understanding. And it was a major novel because it moved past the subjects that were becoming repetitive tics in his novels: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel begins in the fictional community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt 14-year-old foundling the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still identifiable: even then using the drug, beloved by his caregivers, opening every speech with “In this place...” But his role in this novel is confined to these initial sections.

The couple worry about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish female find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist armed force whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently become the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge themes to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not really about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must relate to narrative construction, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the family's children, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is his tale.

And now is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the draft notice through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (Hard Rain, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

He is a duller persona than the heroine suggested to be, and the supporting characters, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are several nice scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently repeated his arguments, telegraphed story twists and let them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before taking them to completion in long, shocking, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a major character suffers the loss of an limb – but we just discover 30 pages before the conclusion.

Esther comes back toward the end in the story, but merely with a final impression of wrapping things up. We never discover the complete narrative of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that His Classic Novel – I reread it alongside this novel – yet remains wonderfully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but a dozen times as great.