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If some writers enjoy an peak era, during which they hit the heights time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a run of several fat, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were rich, witty, big-hearted works, linking characters he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, aside from in size. His last work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more skillfully in previous novels (inability to speak, restricted growth, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

So we look at a new Irving with caution but still a faint flame of hope, which shines brighter when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s very best novels, set largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a failure from a author who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored termination and identity with colour, comedy and an total compassion. And it was a major work because it left behind the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his novels: the sport of wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young ward Esther from the orphanage. We are a several generations ahead of the events of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains identifiable: still dependent on ether, adored by his staff, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is restricted to these opening scenes.

The Winslows worry about raising Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “mission was to protect Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would eventually become the core of the Israel's military.

Such are huge themes to tackle, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not really about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s likewise not about the titular figure. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both regular and distinct. Jimmy moves to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic name (the animal, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting figure than Esther promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are some amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a few thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a nuanced author, but that is not the problem. He has always restated his arguments, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the audience's imagination before leading them to completion in long, surprising, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the narrative. In this novel, a central character is deprived of an arm – but we merely find out 30 pages the conclusion.

She returns late in the story, but just with a final feeling of ending the story. We not once do find out the entire narrative of her life in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a novelist who once gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this novel – yet stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So read that instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as great.