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If certain novelists enjoy an imperial phase, in which they hit the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four substantial, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Such were generous, witty, big-hearted novels, connecting figures he calls “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, except in page length. His previous work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had explored more effectively in previous books (mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page script in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

So we come to a recent Irving with care but still a small glimmer of hope, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s finest novels, set primarily in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

The book is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored termination and acceptance with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the themes that were becoming tiresome habits in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

This book opens in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt teenage foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several generations ahead of the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still recognisable: even then dependent on ether, respected by his caregivers, opening every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in Queen Esther is limited to these early sections.

The family worry about parenting Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed group whose “goal was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are enormous themes to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that this book is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s also not about Esther. For reasons that must relate to plot engineering, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the couple's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a meaningful designation (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller character than the female lead suggested to be, and the minor players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are one-dimensional as well. There are a few amusing set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a few thugs get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a delicate author, but that is isn't the problem. He has repeatedly restated his points, telegraphed plot developments and enabled them to gather in the reader’s thoughts before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: remember the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the story. In this novel, a key person suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely find out 30 pages later the conclusion.

She comes back late in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour feeling of ending the story. We not once discover the entire story of her time in the region. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading together with this work – yet remains excellently, after forty years. So choose it as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as good.