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If certain authors have an imperial period, where they achieve the heights time after time, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four long, gratifying novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, witty, compassionate novels, linking protagonists he describes as “misfits” to social issues from feminism to termination.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, save in size. His last novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had delved into more effectively in earlier books (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a 200-page script in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a faint glimmer of optimism, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages long – “returns to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier books, set mostly in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored abortion and identity with vibrancy, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant book because it moved past the subjects that were becoming annoying habits in his books: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther begins in the fictional village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt 14-year-old ward Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: already addicted to the drug, beloved by his nurses, beginning every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is confined to these early parts.

The family worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a adolescent Jewish girl understand her place?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will become part of the Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary force whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would later become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge themes to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning Esther. For causes that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the family's children, and bears to a son, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is the boy's story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s mention of evading the Vietnam draft through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant title (Hard Rain, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane character than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few thugs get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is is not the issue. He has consistently restated his ideas, hinted at plot developments and let them to build up in the viewer's mind before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, jarring, amusing moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the tongue in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the narrative. In this novel, a major figure loses an limb – but we just discover thirty pages before the finish.

The protagonist reappears late in the book, but only with a eleventh-hour feeling of concluding. We never do find out the entire narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it alongside this novel – yet remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up it as an alternative: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.