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If a few writers enjoy an imperial phase, where they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four substantial, satisfying books, from his late-seventies success Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were expansive, funny, warm novels, tying figures he describes as “outliers” to social issues from feminism to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, except in page length. His last book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had delved into more skillfully in prior books (selective mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the center to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

Thus we come to a recent Irving with reservation but still a small glimmer of expectation, which burns stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is among Irving’s top-tier works, set mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving discussed pregnancy termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant novel because it moved past the themes that were becoming annoying habits in his books: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

The novel starts in the made-up village of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome young ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations prior to the storyline of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch stays familiar: already using anesthetic, adored by his staff, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial parts.

The family worry about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle 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 join Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the basis of the IDF.

These are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not focused on the main character. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for a different of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s discussion of avoiding the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, meet the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a more mundane persona than the heroine hinted to be, and the minor figures, such as pupils Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are several amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a few bullies get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a subtle novelist, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his points, foreshadowed plot developments and enabled them to build up in the reader’s imagination before taking them to completion in lengthy, jarring, funny sequences. For case, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to disappear: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces reverberate through the plot. In the book, a key character loses an arm – but we only find out thirty pages later the conclusion.

The protagonist reappears late in the book, but merely with a final sense of concluding. We never discover the full story of her experiences in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The upside is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this work – even now remains excellently, 40 years on. So choose it as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.