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If certain authors have an golden era, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s lasted through a run of four long, rewarding novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were generous, witty, big-hearted works, linking figures he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, except in word count. His last novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had delved into more effectively in previous works (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint glimmer of hope, which burns hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s very best books, taking place primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving discussed abortion and acceptance with vibrancy, humor and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a significant work because it moved past the themes that were evolving into repetitive habits in his books: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the fictional village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple welcome young orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a several years prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: already dependent on ether, respected by his caregivers, beginning every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial parts.

The family fret about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist militant group whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are enormous subjects to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve plot engineering, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ offspring, and gives birth to a baby boy, James, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this book is his tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and specific. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic title (the animal, recall the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a support and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has consistently repeated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and allowed them to build up in the audience's mind before taking them to fruition in extended, surprising, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the story. In the book, a central character suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely discover thirty pages the end.

She returns in the final part in the novel, but merely with a final impression of concluding. We never learn the full narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the downside. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it in parallel to this book – yet remains beautifully, after forty years. So read that instead: it’s much longer as this book, but a dozen times as great.