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If a few novelists enjoy an golden phase, in which they reach the heights consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s extended through a series of four fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, witty, big-hearted works, tying characters he calls “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in word count. His previous book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages of topics Irving had delved into better in earlier novels (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we come to a latest Irving with reservation but still a small flame of hope, which shines stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “returns to the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s finest novels, taking place primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a major novel because it abandoned the themes that were becoming repetitive habits in his works: wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage ward the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch is still identifiable: even then addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his staff, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in Queen Esther is confined to these early sections.

The couple worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later become the basis of the IDF.

Those are enormous subjects to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s still more disheartening that it’s also not focused on Esther. For reasons that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the family's offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this story is Jimmy’s story.

And now is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a canine with a significant name (Hard Rain, meet Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a duller persona than Esther suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional as well. There are a few enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a handful of ruffians get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle writer, but that is is not the problem. He has consistently repeated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the reader’s mind before bringing them to completion in lengthy, jarring, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the tongue in Garp, the finger in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a central person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only discover 30 pages before the end.

She reappears toward the end in the story, but merely with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We never learn the full narrative of her experiences in the region. The book is a failure from a novelist who once gave such joy. That’s the downside. The positive note is that Cider House – upon rereading alongside this novel – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So choose it in its place: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.