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If a few writers enjoy an imperial period, where they hit the heights repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four fat, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were generous, humorous, compassionate books, linking characters he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from feminism to reproductive rights.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, save in word count. His previous novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of topics Irving had examined more effectively in previous novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, trans issues), with a lengthy film script in the center to fill it out – as if padding were required.

Therefore we look at a latest Irving with care but still a small flame of expectation, which glows stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s very best books, located mostly in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who once gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored abortion and acceptance with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant work because it abandoned the themes that were turning into tiresome patterns in his books: wrestling, bears, Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther begins in the fictional village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades before the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch stays identifiable: still addicted to the drug, respected by his nurses, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in Queen Esther is restricted to these early sections.

The Winslows fret about bringing up Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the IDF.

Such are enormous topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s likewise not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the couple's daughters, and gives birth to a son, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the lion's share of this novel is the boy's narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through bodily injury (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the dog's name, recall the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a more mundane figure than the female lead suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are flat too. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a couple of ruffians get beaten with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is isn't the difficulty. He has always repeated his points, hinted at narrative turns and let them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to completion in long, jarring, funny sequences. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In the book, a central person loses an limb – but we only discover thirty pages the end.

Esther comes back late in the book, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We do not learn the entire account of her experiences in the region. The book is a failure from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the downside. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this novel – even now stands up excellently, after forty years. So choose the earlier work in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.