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If certain novelists have an peak phase, during which they achieve the pinnacle consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a run of four fat, rewarding books, from his late-seventies success Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, witty, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in word count. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had explored more skillfully in previous works (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with care but still a faint flame of hope, which shines hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s very best books, set mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who once gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored termination and identity with richness, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a major book because it moved past the themes that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel opens in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage foundling Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades ahead of the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays familiar: even then dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his staff, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is confined to these opening sections.

The couple worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist armed organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the basis of the IDF.

Those are enormous themes to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. 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 additionally not really concerning Esther. For causes that must connect to plot engineering, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for one more of the family's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is his story.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of avoiding the draft notice through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a significant title (the animal, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, writers and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has always restated his points, hinted at plot developments and allowed them to build up in the viewer's thoughts before leading them to completion in long, jarring, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to disappear: think of the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a key character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only find out 30 pages the finish.

The protagonist reappears late in the novel, but only with a eleventh-hour impression of ending the story. We not once learn the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading alongside this novel – still stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So choose it in its place: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.