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If a few novelists experience an golden period, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a series of four long, gratifying works, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were rich, witty, compassionate books, linking figures he refers to as “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in page length. His most recent novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had delved into better in previous novels (inability to speak, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the middle to extend it – as if padding were needed.

Thus we approach a recent Irving with care but still a faint flame of optimism, which shines brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is among Irving’s very best books, located mostly in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major book because it left behind the subjects that were becoming tiresome tics in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

This book begins in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a few decades ahead of the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays identifiable: still addicted to the drug, adored by his nurses, beginning every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in the book is confined to these opening parts.

The couple fret about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would subsequently form the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge topics to address, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not about the main character. For motivations that must connect to narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for another of the couple's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, James, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this book is the boy's narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both common and specific. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful title (the animal, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting persona than the heroine promised to be, and the minor characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat as well. There are some nice episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly reiterated his points, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to gather in the reader’s mind before taking them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a major figure loses an arm – but we just learn thirty pages the finish.

The protagonist reappears late in the story, but only with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We not once do find out the full story of her life in Palestine and Israel. The book is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that Cider House – upon rereading together with this novel – yet remains wonderfully, after forty years. So read the earlier work as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as great.