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If a few writers experience an imperial period, during which they reach the heights consistently, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a series of four long, rewarding works, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, funny, warm novels, connecting characters he refers to as “misfits” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, save in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had explored more skillfully in prior works (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

So we look at a latest Irving with care but still a tiny spark of expectation, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages in length – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, set mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with vibrancy, wit and an total empathy. And it was a major book because it abandoned the topics that were evolving into repetitive patterns in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

The novel opens in the made-up town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple adopt young foundling Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades prior to the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch remains familiar: still using anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is limited to these early sections.

The couple fret about raising Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Such are huge themes to address, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is the boy's narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both common and distinct. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the city; there’s talk of dodging the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (the dog's name, meet the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are underdeveloped also. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a handful of ruffians get beaten with a walking aid 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 repeatedly restated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before leading them to fruition in lengthy, jarring, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the plot. In this novel, a central person suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we only learn thirty pages later the end.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the story, but just with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We do not learn the complete account of her time in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it together with this novel – even now holds up excellently, four decades later. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but 12 times as enjoyable.