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If some writers have an imperial period, in which they achieve the heights repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of four fat, satisfying works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were rich, funny, warm works, tying characters he refers to as “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in page length. His previous novel, the 2022 release His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in prior books (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a 200-page film script in the middle to fill it out – as if filler were needed.

Thus we come to a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of expectation, which shines stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is among Irving’s finest works, set primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, managed by Dr Larch and his assistant Homer.

This novel is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored abortion and acceptance with colour, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major book because it left behind the subjects that were evolving into annoying habits in his novels: the sport of wrestling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the fictional community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few decades prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch remains familiar: even then dependent on anesthetic, adored by his caregivers, starting every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is restricted to these opening scenes.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant force whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israel's military.

Such are massive topics to address, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not really about St Cloud’s and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on Esther. For reasons that must relate to story mechanics, Esther becomes a gestational carrier for another of the family's daughters, and bears to a son, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, recall the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a more mundane character than the heroine promised to be, and the supporting players, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are underdeveloped also. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few thugs get beaten with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is not the difficulty. He has always repeated his arguments, hinted at narrative turns and allowed them to gather in the viewer's mind before taking them to completion in long, jarring, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the plot. In Queen Esther, a key figure loses an arm – but we only learn 30 pages later the finish.

Esther reappears in the final part in the novel, but merely with a eleventh-hour impression of concluding. We do not learn the entire narrative of her life in Palestine and Israel. This novel is a disappointment from a author who once gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading in parallel to this book – still remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up it as an alternative: it’s much longer as Queen Esther, but far as good.