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If certain novelists enjoy an imperial phase, in which they hit the heights consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four fat, rewarding books, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were generous, funny, big-hearted books, tying figures he calls “misfits” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning results, save in page length. His last work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had delved into more effectively in earlier books (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a 200-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Thus we look at a latest Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which shines brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s very best books, set mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and belonging with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant work because it moved past the topics that were evolving into tiresome patterns in his works: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book starts in the imaginary village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome young orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of decades prior to the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch remains identifiable: still using anesthetic, respected by his caregivers, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in Queen Esther is limited to these early parts.

The family fret about parenting Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to the area, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “purpose was to defend Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s also not focused on the titular figure. For causes that must connect to narrative construction, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is the boy's story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a significant name (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a less interesting figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are several nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a delicate writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, funny sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to disappear: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In this novel, a key character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we merely learn 30 pages later the end.

She returns toward the end in the story, but only with a final sense of wrapping things up. We not once learn the full story of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such joy. That’s the downside. The good news is that Cider House – revisiting it together with this work – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up that in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but far as enjoyable.