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If certain authors enjoy an golden period, in which they hit the summit consistently, then American writer John Irving’s extended through a run of four substantial, rewarding novels, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were expansive, witty, warm books, tying protagonists he describes as “misfits” to cultural themes from feminism to abortion.

Since His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning results, except in word count. His last novel, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had explored better in earlier books (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a 200-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a small spark of optimism, which burns brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s finest books, located mostly in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, comedy and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a important novel because it left behind the subjects that were turning into annoying patterns in his works: grappling, bears, Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt 14-year-old foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations prior to the storyline of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: already addicted to the drug, adored by his staff, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial scenes.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must involve narrative construction, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is the boy's narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – naturally – Vienna; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a dog with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, recall the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a duller figure than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as young people the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get battered with a support and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced author, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly restated his ideas, hinted at story twists and let them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before taking them to completion in extended, surprising, funny scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, anatomical features tend to go missing: think of the tongue in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a major person suffers the loss of an limb – but we only find out 30 pages before the conclusion.

She returns in the final part in the book, but only with a last-minute impression of concluding. We do not learn the full account of her life in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this book – still remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up the earlier work in its place: it’s much longer as the new novel, but far as enjoyable.