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If a few novelists experience an imperial phase, in which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then American writer John Irving’s extended through a sequence of several fat, gratifying books, from his 1978 hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, funny, warm works, connecting characters he calls “outliers” to social issues from gender equality to termination.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning results, aside from in word count. His last book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had delved into better in prior novels (inability to speak, short stature, gender identity), with a lengthy script in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

Therefore we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a faint flame of hope, which burns hotter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages long – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, set primarily in an institution in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Larch and his assistant Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored pregnancy termination and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a major novel because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

This book opens in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few years prior to the events of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor stays recognisable: still addicted to the drug, respected by his staff, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in this novel is restricted to these early parts.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist militant force whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from opposition” and which would later form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are enormous topics to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a substitute parent for another of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a son, the boy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is the boy's narrative.

And now is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both regular and specific. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of avoiding the military conscription through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a significant name (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller figure than Esther hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are some nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a delicate author, but that is isn't the problem. He has always repeated his points, telegraphed story twists and let them to gather in the audience's thoughts before taking them to completion in long, shocking, amusing scenes. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to be lost: think of the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the plot. In this novel, a major character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only find out 30 pages the end.

Esther reappears toward the end in the story, but just with a final feeling of concluding. We never do find out the complete story of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this book – yet remains excellently, four decades later. So read that in its place: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but far as great.