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If a few writers have an golden phase, where they hit the summit time after time, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a series of four fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 success Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were rich, funny, compassionate works, tying protagonists he describes as “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing outcomes, save in word count. His previous novel, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had delved into more skillfully in earlier books (selective mutism, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

So we look at a latest Irving with caution but still a tiny glimmer of hope, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s very best books, taking place mostly in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with richness, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a important novel because it abandoned the subjects that were becoming tiresome habits in his books: grappling, bears, Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple adopt young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several generations ahead of the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch is still identifiable: even then addicted to ether, respected by his staff, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in this novel is confined to these early parts.

The family worry about parenting Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will become part of Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently form the foundation of the IDF.

Those are enormous themes to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s additionally not about Esther. For motivations that must connect to plot engineering, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for a different of the Winslows’ children, and bears to a son, the boy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this story is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (Owen Meany); a pet with a significant name (the dog's name, meet the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

The character is a more mundane persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat also. There are several amusing set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a couple of bullies get beaten with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is isn't the problem. He has consistently repeated his points, telegraphed plot developments and allowed them to gather in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces resonate through the story. In Queen Esther, a major character is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only discover 30 pages later the finish.

Esther returns in the final part in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We not once discover the full account of her experiences in the region. The book is a failure from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it in parallel to this novel – even now remains wonderfully, four decades later. So choose that as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as great.