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If some authors enjoy an imperial phase, where they achieve the heights repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s ran through a run of four long, gratifying works, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, compassionate novels, linking figures he describes as “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, save in page length. His previous work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in earlier works (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with care but still a faint flame of optimism, which glows brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages in length – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s finest novels, located primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a novelist who in the past gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant book because it moved past the subjects that were turning into tiresome tics in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Austrian capital, prostitution.

This book begins in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young ward the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few years prior to the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still familiar: still using ether, adored by his caregivers, beginning every talk with “In this place...” But his role in the book is confined to these early scenes.

The couple worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish girl discover her identity?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the pro-Zionist paramilitary force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the Israel's military.

Those are huge subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s additionally not focused on the titular figure. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the family's children, and delivers to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this story is his story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a pet with a meaningful name (the animal, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller figure than the heroine hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a few ruffians get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has always restated his points, telegraphed story twists and enabled them to gather in the reader’s mind before taking them to completion in lengthy, surprising, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: remember the tongue in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key character suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we merely find out thirty pages the finish.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the novel, but just with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We not once do find out the complete narrative of her life in the region. This novel is a failure from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading in parallel to this novel – still stands up beautifully, four decades later. So choose that in its place: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but far as great.