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If some writers have an imperial period, where they hit the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four substantial, satisfying books, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, witty, compassionate novels, connecting characters he describes as “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in page length. His last book, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in previous books (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were required.

Thus we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny flame of optimism, which burns hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s very best novels, located primarily in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

This novel is a failure from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored abortion and identity with richness, humor and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the themes that were evolving into repetitive habits in his books: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, prostitution.

The novel starts in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt 14-year-old orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades ahead of the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch is still recognisable: still using anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, opening every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is limited to these initial scenes.

The family fret about parenting Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish girl find herself?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter the Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant force whose “purpose was to defend Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently become the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are enormous themes to take on, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is not really about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on Esther. For motivations that must connect to narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for another of the family's children, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of dodging the draft notice through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant designation (the animal, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat too. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a delicate author, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly restated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's mind before bringing them to fruition in extended, shocking, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: remember the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In the book, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we only find out 30 pages the finish.

The protagonist comes back toward the end in the novel, but merely with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We never discover the complete account of her life in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading alongside this work – still remains beautifully, after forty years. So pick up that in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but far as great.