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If certain writers enjoy an peak phase, during which they reach the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s extended through a series of several long, gratifying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were expansive, funny, warm books, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to cultural themes from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, except in size. His last work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of subjects Irving had examined more effectively in earlier works (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a 200-page screenplay in the middle to fill it out – as if padding were required.

So we look at a new Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of optimism, which glows brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages long – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s top-tier works, located largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a writer who once gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important book because it left behind the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his novels: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

The novel starts in the imaginary community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome young ward the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades before the events of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch remains identifiable: still dependent on the drug, adored by his staff, starting every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in this novel is limited to these opening parts.

The Winslows fret about bringing up Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary group whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually establish the basis of the IDF.

Those are enormous topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s additionally not about the titular figure. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for one more of the family's offspring, and bears to a male child, the boy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this novel is his story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – Vienna; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a canine with a significant name (the dog's name, meet Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a more mundane character than Esther hinted to be, and the supporting figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are one-dimensional too. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a few bullies get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is isn't the issue. He has always reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to gather in the audience's imagination before taking them to fruition in lengthy, surprising, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a key person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only learn thirty pages before the finish.

She comes back in the final part in the book, but just with a last-minute sense of concluding. We never discover the entire narrative of her experiences in the region. The book is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading alongside this novel – even now holds up excellently, 40 years on. So pick up it in its place: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as good.