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If some novelists enjoy an golden phase, where they achieve the pinnacle consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, funny, compassionate works, tying figures he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from feminism to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, save in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we come to a new Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of expectation, which shines brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages long – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s very best works, taking place mostly in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

This novel is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an total understanding. And it was a significant book because it left behind the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book opens in the fictional village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple take in young foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several years before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: still addicted to the drug, beloved by his caregivers, starting every talk with “In this place...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these early sections.

The Winslows worry about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Zionist armed group whose “goal was to protect Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would later establish the foundation of the IDF.

Those are huge topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is Jimmy’s story.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the military conscription through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, recall the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and let them to gather in the viewer's mind before bringing them to fruition in extended, shocking, amusing moments. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In this novel, a central person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we merely find out 30 pages the end.

Esther returns late in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour impression of wrapping things up. We not once learn the full account of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this work – even now remains beautifully, after forty years. So read it as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as enjoyable.