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If certain authors experience an imperial era, in which they achieve the summit consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four fat, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were generous, funny, compassionate books, connecting characters he describes as “outsiders” to cultural themes from gender equality to reproductive rights.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, except in page length. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had delved into better in prior novels (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were necessary.

Therefore we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a faint spark of hope, which burns stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages in length – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is one of Irving’s top-tier novels, located largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored termination and acceptance with colour, wit and an all-encompassing compassion. And it was a important work because it abandoned the subjects that were evolving into annoying habits in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the imaginary community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the twentieth century's dawn, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow adopt young ward the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a few decades ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch remains identifiable: even then using ether, beloved by his caregivers, opening every speech with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in Queen Esther is limited to these opening sections.

The Winslows fret about raising Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To address that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will enter Haganah, the pro-Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish settlements from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently form the core of the Israel's military.

These are massive subjects to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not focused on Esther. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for a different of the family's daughters, and gives birth to a baby boy, the boy, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s narrative.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a significant title (the animal, meet Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller character than the female lead hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are some enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before taking them to resolution in long, surprising, entertaining sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: think of the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences resonate through the plot. In the book, a key figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we merely discover thirty pages before the end.

Esther reappears late in the book, but only with a last-minute feeling of concluding. We do not do find out the full account of her experiences in the region. This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such joy. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that His Classic Novel – I reread it alongside this work – still holds up excellently, four decades later. So read it in its place: it’s twice as long as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as great.