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If a few authors experience an imperial era, where they hit the summit repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of several fat, rewarding novels, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, humorous, compassionate works, linking protagonists he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, aside from in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had delved into more effectively in previous books (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a small spark of hope, which burns hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s top-tier works, set mostly in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

The book is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and belonging with colour, wit and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a major novel because it left behind the themes that were becoming annoying patterns in his novels: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

The novel opens in the imaginary town of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt 14-year-old foundling Esther from the orphanage. We are a few years before the events of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: still addicted to ether, adored by his nurses, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these initial scenes.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Zionist militant group whose “purpose was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge topics to tackle, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not about the titular figure. For causes that must involve plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and delivers to a son, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this book is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting character than the female lead promised to be, and the supporting characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are flat as well. There are several enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently restated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the reader’s mind before leading them to completion in long, shocking, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to be lost: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the narrative. In the book, a major figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we only find out thirty pages before the conclusion.

The protagonist reappears in the final part in the book, but just with a final sense of ending the story. We not once discover the full story of her time in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading together with this book – still stands up beautifully, 40 years on. So read that in its place: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but a dozen times as great.