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If some writers have an golden period, in which they hit the heights repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s extended through a series of four fat, satisfying works, from his 1978 breakthrough Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, witty, big-hearted works, linking characters he refers to as “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, aside from in page length. His most recent work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had explored better in earlier books (mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page script in the center to pad it out – as if filler were required.

Therefore we look at a new Irving with care but still a small glimmer of hope, which glows stronger when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages in length – “revisits the world of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best novels, set largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight

In Cider House, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a major book because it left behind the topics that were evolving into tiresome tics in his books: grappling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome teenage foundling Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch stays recognisable: still dependent on the drug, beloved by his caregivers, opening every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in the book is restricted to these opening parts.

The couple are concerned about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist armed organisation whose “mission was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later become the foundation of the Israel's military.

Those are massive topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not really about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more disappointing that it’s also not really concerning Esther. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the family's children, and delivers to a male child, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this book is Jimmy’s story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both typical and specific. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – Vienna; there’s mention of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, recall the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller figure than Esther suggested to be, and the secondary characters, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are underdeveloped too. There are a few nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to build up in the reader’s mind before bringing them to fruition in lengthy, surprising, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to be lost: remember the oral part in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a major person loses an arm – but we just learn 30 pages later the conclusion.

Esther comes back in the final part in the story, but merely with a final impression of concluding. We do not do find out the entire narrative of her life in the Middle East. The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading in parallel to this work – still stands up beautifully, four decades later. So pick up the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but 12 times as good.