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If a few writers experience an golden period, where they achieve the heights consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a series of four substantial, rewarding works, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were generous, funny, big-hearted works, linking figures he calls “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in size. His previous novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had examined better in prior works (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page script in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were required.

So we approach a recent Irving with reservation but still a small spark of optimism, which shines stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s finest works, set mostly in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a significant work because it moved past the topics that were becoming repetitive tics in his works: the sport of wrestling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel starts in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple take in teenage ward Esther from the orphanage. We are a several generations ahead of the storyline of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains recognisable: still addicted to the drug, adored by his caregivers, opening every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in the book is confined to these initial scenes.

The family worry about parenting Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a teenage Jewish girl understand her place?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary force whose “goal was to defend Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would later establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Those are huge subjects to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s also not about Esther. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the couple's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s narrative.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy moves to – naturally – the city; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (His Earlier Book); a canine with a meaningful title (Hard Rain, recall the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a less interesting character than the female lead hinted to be, and the minor players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are flat too. There are a few nice set pieces – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a few thugs get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a delicate writer, but that is is not the problem. He has always restated his ideas, foreshadowed plot developments and enabled them to accumulate in the viewer's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in long, surprising, entertaining scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, physical elements tend to disappear: recall the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the narrative. In this novel, a key person is deprived of an upper extremity – but we merely find out 30 pages the finish.

Esther returns late in the story, but only with a last-minute feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the full story of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who previously gave such delight. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it alongside this book – still remains excellently, 40 years on. So choose the earlier work instead: it’s twice as long as the new novel, but 12 times as good.