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If a few novelists enjoy an peak period, in which they achieve the pinnacle time after time, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several long, satisfying books, from his late-seventies breakthrough Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were rich, funny, warm novels, tying characters he calls “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

After Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing returns, save in size. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in previous novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy film script in the heart to fill it out – as if filler were necessary.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with care but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which glows stronger when we find out that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is part of Irving’s very best works, set mostly in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Larch and his apprentice Wells.

This novel is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about termination and identity with richness, humor and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a important novel because it moved past the subjects that were turning into repetitive tics in his books: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

The novel begins in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple take in young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few decades ahead of the action of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains familiar: still addicted to anesthetic, adored by his staff, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is confined to these opening parts.

The couple are concerned about parenting Esther well: she’s of Jewish faith, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish migration to Palestine, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently establish the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are massive topics to take on, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not really about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s still more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on the main character. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther turns into a substitute parent for one more of the family's daughters, and bears to a male child, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this novel is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both regular and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a pet with a symbolic name (the dog's name, remember the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting persona than Esther promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor the tutor, are one-dimensional as well. There are some enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get assaulted with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a nuanced writer, but that is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to build up in the audience's thoughts before taking them to completion in long, jarring, entertaining sequences. For example, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to go missing: think of the oral part in The Garp Novel, the digit in His Owen Book. Those losses reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central person suffers the loss of an arm – but we just discover thirty pages before the finish.

Esther comes back in the final part in the novel, but merely with a last-minute impression of concluding. We never discover the full narrative of her experiences in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who once gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – I reread it together with this novel – yet holds up excellently, 40 years on. So read the earlier work in its place: it’s double the length as this book, but a dozen times as good.