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If certain writers have an golden era, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a run of four long, satisfying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were expansive, funny, warm books, connecting characters he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to termination.

After Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, aside from in page length. His last book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored better in prior books (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with care but still a small spark of optimism, which glows stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier works, taking place mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and identity with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major book because it abandoned the themes that were becoming tiresome habits in his books: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book begins in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple take in teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: even then addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is restricted to these early parts.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Zionist armed force whose “mission was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge themes to address, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s additionally not about the main character. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for a different of the couple's offspring, and bears to a son, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a significant designation (the dog's name, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting characters, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are flat too. There are some enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of ruffians get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently reiterated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to build up in the viewer's mind before leading them to resolution in extended, shocking, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to be lost: recall the speech organ in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In this novel, a key figure is deprived of an arm – but we only learn thirty pages later the end.

Esther returns in the final part in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We not once learn the entire narrative of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. The book is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the downside. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it together with this work – even now stands up excellently, four decades later. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as good.