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If a few writers have an imperial period, where they achieve the summit repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a run of several substantial, gratifying works, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were rich, funny, warm novels, connecting protagonists he describes as “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, aside from in word count. His most recent work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages of themes Irving had examined more effectively in earlier works (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if filler were needed.

So we look at a new Irving with reservation but still a tiny spark of expectation, which glows brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “goes back to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s very best books, set primarily in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

This novel is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and acceptance with richness, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important novel because it moved past the subjects that were turning into annoying patterns in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther starts in the fictional town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young ward the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of generations prior to the action of His Earlier Novel, yet the doctor is still identifiable: already dependent on the drug, beloved by his caregivers, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is confined to these opening parts.

The Winslows are concerned about bringing up Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant group whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually form the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are massive subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more upsetting that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For causes that must connect to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a substitute parent for a different of the couple's children, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in World War II era – and the bulk of this book is Jimmy’s tale.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the draft notice through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a significant name (Hard Rain, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a more mundane persona than Esther promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are several nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly restated his points, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to accumulate in the reader’s imagination before taking them to resolution in extended, jarring, amusing sequences. For example, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to be lost: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the story. In the book, a key figure loses an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages before the end.

She returns in the final part in the book, but only with a last-minute sense of concluding. We do not learn the complete story of her life in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it in parallel to this book – still stands up wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up it instead: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but far as good.