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If a few authors experience an peak phase, in which they reach the summit time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s lasted through a series of four substantial, gratifying books, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, funny, warm books, tying figures he calls “outliers” to cultural themes from gender equality to termination.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, except in page length. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had explored more skillfully in prior novels (selective mutism, short stature, gender identity), with a 200-page screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Thus we look at a latest Irving with reservation but still a faint glimmer of optimism, which shines hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages long – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s top-tier novels, set largely in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

Queen Esther is a letdown from a writer who in the past gave such joy

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored abortion and belonging with richness, comedy and an total empathy. And it was a major book because it left behind the topics that were evolving into tiresome habits in his works: grappling, wild bears, the city of Vienna, prostitution.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple adopt 14-year-old orphan the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades prior to the storyline of Cider House, yet the doctor is still recognisable: already dependent on anesthetic, adored by his caregivers, opening every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in the book is limited to these initial sections.

The family worry about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we jump ahead to Esther’s grown-up years in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join the Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant group whose “goal was to protect Jewish towns from opposition” and which would eventually form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Those are huge subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that the novel is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the couple's daughters, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is the boy's story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and specific. Jimmy relocates to – of course – Vienna; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a significant title (the dog's name, recall the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

The character is a duller figure than the heroine suggested to be, and the secondary players, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a couple of bullies get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly restated his points, telegraphed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before leading them to resolution in lengthy, jarring, amusing sequences. For instance, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the plot. In this novel, a key person is deprived of an arm – but we merely find out 30 pages the finish.

The protagonist returns in the final part in the story, but merely with a eleventh-hour feeling of wrapping things up. We do not do find out the full story of her time in the Middle East. This novel is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it together with this novel – even now holds up excellently, 40 years on. So choose it instead: it’s twice as long as this book, but a dozen times as enjoyable.