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If certain novelists experience an golden phase, in which they achieve the heights consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s extended through a run of several fat, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were generous, humorous, big-hearted works, connecting figures he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, except in size. His previous novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined better in earlier novels (mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of optimism, which burns hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is part of Irving’s finest books, taking place largely in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who previously gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored abortion and belonging with vibrancy, comedy and an total understanding. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the topics that were becoming tiresome tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

This book starts in the fictional community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several years ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch is still identifiable: still addicted to the drug, beloved by his staff, starting every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these early parts.

The family worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish female find herself?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would later establish the core of the Israel's military.

Those are massive subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s still more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For causes that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the family's offspring, and bears to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s story.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (the dog's name, remember Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller figure than Esther promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are underdeveloped as well. There are several amusing set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a few thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently restated his points, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to resolution in extended, jarring, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to be lost: recall the tongue in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the story. In the book, a central figure is deprived of an limb – but we just find out 30 pages the end.

The protagonist returns late in the book, but only with a final impression of concluding. We not once discover the entire account of her life in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this novel – still holds up beautifully, after forty years. So choose it in its place: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.