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If some authors enjoy an golden period, in which they reach the heights time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a run of several long, gratifying works, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were expansive, witty, compassionate books, connecting protagonists he calls “outsiders” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been declining returns, save in size. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had delved into more effectively in prior books (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint glimmer of hope, which shines stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s very best works, located primarily in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, humor and an total compassion. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the topics that were becoming repetitive tics in his works: wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel begins in the imaginary community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades ahead of the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays familiar: already using the drug, adored by his staff, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in this novel is restricted to these initial parts.

The family worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young Jewish girl discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will join the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist militant force whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would later establish the core of the IDF.

Those are huge topics to address, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and delivers to a male child, the boy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and specific. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a dog with a symbolic name (the animal, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than Esther promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are underdeveloped too. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a couple of ruffians get beaten with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is not the problem. He has always restated his points, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to gather in the viewer's imagination before taking them to completion in lengthy, jarring, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to disappear: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the digit in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In this novel, a key character loses an upper extremity – but we just discover 30 pages before the conclusion.

She returns toward the end in the story, but just with a last-minute impression of ending the story. We never discover the complete story of her life in the Middle East. This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such delight. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it alongside this work – still stands up excellently, four decades later. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.