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If a few authors experience an golden period, in which they hit the pinnacle time after time, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several fat, satisfying books, from his 1978 hit Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. These were generous, witty, big-hearted books, linking characters he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to abortion.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining returns, aside from in size. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had examined better in prior books (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page script in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Thus we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of hope, which burns brighter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages in length – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is one of Irving’s very best works, taking place primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant book because it abandoned the subjects that were turning into annoying tics in his works: the sport of wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

This book starts in the made-up town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few years ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch remains identifiable: already dependent on ether, beloved by his caregivers, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in this novel is confined to these initial sections.

The family are concerned about raising Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would later become the foundation of the IDF.

These are huge themes to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not actually about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For motivations that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for one more of the family's offspring, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is the boy's tale.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of avoiding the draft notice through self-harm (Owen Meany); a canine with a significant name (the dog's name, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

The character is a less interesting character than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional too. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not once been a subtle writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has always reiterated his points, foreshadowed story twists and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to resolution in extended, surprising, entertaining scenes. For example, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to be lost: remember the tongue in Garp, the digit in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key character suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just discover 30 pages the conclusion.

The protagonist reappears late in the story, but merely with a final feeling of wrapping things up. We not once do find out the full narrative of her time in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a failure from a author who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it together with this work – yet stands up excellently, after forty years. So choose it instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but far as great.