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If certain authors enjoy an peak period, where they achieve the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s ran through a run of four fat, rewarding works, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Such were expansive, funny, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he refers to as “outsiders” to societal topics from feminism to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning returns, aside from in size. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had delved into better in prior novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which burns stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s finest novels, set primarily in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with vibrancy, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant work because it left behind the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his novels: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in young foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a few decades prior to the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: even then using the drug, adored by his nurses, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these opening sections.

The couple fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Zionist paramilitary force whose “purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the IDF.

Those are enormous themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the couple's offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, James, in World War II era – and the majority of this book is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of dodging the draft notice through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a significant name (Hard Rain, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are several nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a handful of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a delicate writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has consistently restated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the viewer's imagination before leading them to fruition in long, surprising, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a central person suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely discover thirty pages before the conclusion.

Esther reappears late in the novel, but merely with a last-minute sense of concluding. We never discover the entire account of her time in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The positive note is that Cider House – revisiting it in parallel to this book – even now remains excellently, four decades later. So read that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.