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If certain authors enjoy an imperial era, where they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a run of several long, gratifying works, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were expansive, witty, big-hearted books, linking figures he refers to as “misfits” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning results, save in word count. His most recent novel, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had delved into more effectively in previous novels (selective mutism, dwarfism, gender identity), with a 200-page film script in the center to extend it – as if filler were needed.

So we look at a latest Irving with reservation but still a small flame of expectation, which glows brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best books, taking place largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a author who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the topics that were turning into tiresome patterns in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

This book begins in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple take in 14-year-old ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of years ahead of the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays familiar: still addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is limited to these initial sections.

The couple are concerned about raising Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young Jewish female understand her place?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish communities from opposition” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israel's military.

Such are massive themes to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For causes that must relate to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for a different of the family's children, and bears to a son, the boy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is Jimmy’s tale.

And now is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both common and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a dog with a meaningful title (Hard Rain, recall the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane figure than the heroine suggested to be, and the supporting players, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few ruffians get battered with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before taking them to completion in extended, shocking, amusing moments. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: think of the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the plot. In this novel, a major figure is deprived of an limb – but we just find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

Esther returns in the final part in the story, but only with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We not once discover the complete story of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such joy. That’s the downside. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this book – yet stands up beautifully, 40 years on. So read it in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.