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If certain novelists experience an imperial era, in which they hit the heights time after time, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s lasted through a series of four long, rewarding works, from his 1978 breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were expansive, funny, compassionate novels, tying characters he refers to as “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Following A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, save in size. His previous work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages in length of topics Irving had explored better in previous works (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the heart to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

So we approach a recent Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which burns hotter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages in length – “goes back to the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 novel is among Irving’s top-tier novels, taking place largely in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

This novel is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with colour, wit and an comprehensive understanding. And it was a significant work because it moved past the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, sex work.

The novel begins in the made-up village of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple welcome teenage ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a few years ahead of the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch remains familiar: already addicted to anesthetic, adored by his staff, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these opening scenes.

The Winslows fret about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant group whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later form the basis of the IDF.

These are huge topics to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s also not focused on Esther. For motivations that must involve story mechanics, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for one more of the family's daughters, and bears to a baby boy, the boy, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both regular and particular. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic designation (the animal, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a less interesting figure than Esther hinted to be, and the minor characters, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are several amusing scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, telegraphed plot developments and let them to gather in the viewer's imagination before bringing them to completion in long, shocking, amusing moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: remember the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the narrative. In the book, a major character is deprived of an arm – but we merely learn 30 pages before the conclusion.

Esther returns in the final part in the novel, but merely with a final impression of ending the story. We not once discover the entire story of her experiences in the region. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the downside. The good news is that Cider House – upon rereading together with this book – yet holds up wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up it in its place: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as enjoyable.