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If a few novelists have an imperial phase, where they hit the heights repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s extended through a run of several long, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, humorous, big-hearted books, tying figures he refers to as “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, except in word count. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in prior works (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a lengthy script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

So we approach a new Irving with caution but still a faint spark of hope, which glows hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best books, set primarily in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and acceptance with richness, wit and an total compassion. And it was a significant work because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming repetitive habits in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel opens in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in teenage ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several years ahead of the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains recognisable: still dependent on the drug, respected by his caregivers, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in this novel is restricted to these early scenes.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually become the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are massive themes to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For causes that must connect to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ offspring, and bears to a son, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this book is Jimmy’s story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a meaningful name (the dog's name, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

He is a duller persona than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary figures, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a few thugs get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and let them to gather in the viewer's imagination before bringing them to completion in lengthy, jarring, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: remember the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the plot. In the book, a major character is deprived of an arm – but we just find out 30 pages before the conclusion.

Esther returns late in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We not once learn the complete account of her life in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it in parallel to this novel – even now remains wonderfully, after forty years. So pick up the earlier work instead: it’s double the length as this book, but 12 times as good.