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If a few writers enjoy an imperial era, where they achieve the heights time after time, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying books, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, funny, big-hearted works, tying figures he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, except in size. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in previous works (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy film script in the center to extend it – as if padding were necessary.

Thus we look at a latest Irving with care but still a faint spark of expectation, which glows stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages – “goes back to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier novels, set largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

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

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant book because it left behind the subjects that were evolving into tiresome habits in his works: wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young ward the title character from the orphanage. We are a several decades prior to the events of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor remains familiar: even then addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is restricted to these opening sections.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish girl find herself?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join the Haganah, the Zionist militant group whose “goal was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are massive topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for another of the couple's children, and bears to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful title (the dog's name, remember Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a duller figure than the heroine hinted to be, and the secondary figures, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are underdeveloped also. There are several nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a few thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is not the issue. He has always repeated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the audience's mind before leading them to completion in extended, shocking, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the oral part in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a major person is deprived of an arm – but we only find out thirty pages the conclusion.

Esther comes back late in the novel, but just with a final sense of concluding. We do not do find out the entire account of her life in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this book – yet stands up beautifully, four decades later. So read that in its place: it’s double the length as the new novel, but 12 times as great.