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If certain writers enjoy an golden era, in which they reach the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four substantial, gratifying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, funny, big-hearted books, linking figures he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to termination.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, save in page length. His last work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had examined better in prior books (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a 200-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if padding were needed.

So we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a small flame of optimism, which shines brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best works, set largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the topics that were turning into repetitive tics in his novels: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in young ward the title character from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years before the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: already using the drug, beloved by his staff, opening every address with “In this place...” But his role in Queen Esther is confined to these opening parts.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish girl understand her place?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish communities from hostile actions” and which would later establish the core of the Israel's military.

These are enormous themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s likewise not focused on the titular figure. For motivations that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the couple's children, and delivers to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the bulk of this novel is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a meaningful title (the animal, recall Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane character than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor figures, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are flat as well. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a few ruffians get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is isn't the issue. He has always reiterated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the audience's imagination before leading them to fruition in long, surprising, entertaining moments. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we just find out 30 pages later the end.

She returns toward the end in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of concluding. We never discover the full story of her experiences in the Middle East. This novel is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it in parallel to this book – even now stands up beautifully, after forty years. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as good.