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If some novelists have an peak phase, where they achieve the heights repeatedly, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four long, satisfying books, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were rich, witty, warm novels, tying figures he calls “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, save in page length. His last work, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had explored more effectively in earlier novels (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the heart to pad it out – as if padding were needed.

So we come to a recent Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of expectation, which glows hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s top-tier works, taking place largely in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who in the past gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with colour, comedy and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a significant work because it left behind the subjects that were evolving into tiresome habits in his books: wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

The novel starts in the imaginary village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt teenage orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a several generations before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: even then addicted to ether, respected by his caregivers, starting every address with “In this place...” But his role in this novel is restricted to these opening sections.

The couple are concerned about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant force whose “mission was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would later form the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on Esther. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for a different of the Winslows’ offspring, and delivers to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a significant name (the animal, remember the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, writers and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than the female lead promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently reiterated his arguments, telegraphed plot developments and enabled them to accumulate in the viewer's mind before taking them to completion in lengthy, surprising, funny scenes. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In Queen Esther, a central person is deprived of an arm – but we only discover thirty pages the end.

She comes back late in the book, but merely with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the full story of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this book – still remains excellently, four decades later. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.