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If certain authors have an peak phase, in which they achieve the summit consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, gratifying novels, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were generous, witty, compassionate novels, connecting characters he describes as “outliers” to societal topics from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, save in size. His last work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in earlier books (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were necessary.

So we approach a recent Irving with care but still a faint flame of expectation, which glows hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s top-tier books, located primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and acceptance with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the subjects that were evolving into annoying tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

The novel opens in the imaginary community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young ward Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several generations prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch remains recognisable: even then dependent on the drug, beloved by his nurses, starting every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is limited to these opening sections.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female find herself?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently establish the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not actually about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s additionally not about the main character. For causes that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a baby boy, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the bulk of this story is Jimmy’s narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both common and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (Hard Rain, meet the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a more mundane persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a couple of thugs get battered with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has consistently reiterated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's mind before taking them to resolution in extended, surprising, amusing sequences. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to disappear: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central figure loses an arm – but we only find out thirty pages the conclusion.

She comes back in the final part in the novel, but merely with a final impression of concluding. We not once learn the complete account of her life in the region. The book is a failure from a author who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this book – even now stands up wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s double the length as this book, but a dozen times as enjoyable.