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If some authors enjoy an golden era, where they reach the summit time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying books, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, witty, compassionate works, tying characters he describes as “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in size. His most recent work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had explored more skillfully in prior works (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were needed.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny spark of hope, which glows stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s finest works, set largely in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer.

The book is a failure from a writer who once gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving discussed abortion and identity with richness, comedy and an total understanding. And it was a important novel because it left behind the topics that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel opens in the imaginary village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young foundling the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still identifiable: still addicted to ether, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these initial sections.

The Winslows are concerned about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist militant organisation whose “mission was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

Such are huge subjects to take on, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For causes that must relate to plot engineering, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is Jimmy’s narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – where else? – the city; there’s talk of dodging the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a meaningful name (Hard Rain, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a less interesting persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are flat too. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a handful of thugs get battered with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced novelist, but that is not the problem. He has consistently reiterated his ideas, telegraphed story twists and allowed them to gather in the viewer's imagination before leading them to fruition in lengthy, shocking, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: think of the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the plot. In this novel, a central character is deprived of an arm – but we just learn thirty pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the story, but merely with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We not once do find out the full narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it together with this work – still remains excellently, four decades later. So choose the earlier work in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as good.