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If a few authors enjoy an peak era, during which they reach the pinnacle consistently, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 hit Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were generous, funny, warm works, connecting figures he calls “outsiders” to social issues from feminism to reproductive rights.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in size. His last novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in earlier novels (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a lengthy film script in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were needed.

Thus we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of optimism, which glows hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s finest novels, located largely in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and acceptance with vibrancy, wit and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the topics that were becoming repetitive tics in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

This book begins in the fictional town 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 The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch stays familiar: even then addicted to ether, respected by his caregivers, beginning every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in this novel is confined to these initial scenes.

The family are concerned about raising Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from opposition” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israel's military.

Such are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For reasons that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for another of the family's offspring, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting persona than the female lead promised to be, and the secondary players, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are several amusing scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few ruffians get beaten with a walking aid and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a subtle author, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the viewer's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, jarring, entertaining scenes. For example, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the tongue in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the narrative. In this novel, a key person loses an upper extremity – but we just find out thirty pages the finish.

The protagonist returns toward the end in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of concluding. We do not learn the entire story of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a letdown from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this book – still holds up beautifully, after forty years. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but 12 times as good.