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If some novelists have an imperial period, where they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. author John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four long, satisfying novels, from his 1978 breakthrough Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, funny, big-hearted novels, connecting figures he describes as “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to abortion.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning outcomes, except in page length. His previous book, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of themes Irving had examined more effectively in previous works (inability to speak, dwarfism, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page script in the middle to fill it out – as if extra material were needed.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with reservation but still a small spark of optimism, which burns brighter when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a just four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “goes back to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s finest books, located mostly in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

The book is a disappointment from a novelist who once gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with colour, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a important work because it moved past the subjects that were turning into annoying tics in his novels: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, sex work.

The novel opens in the made-up village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young orphan the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades prior to the events of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch is still identifiable: already using anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, starting every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in the book is restricted to these initial parts.

The Winslows are concerned about raising Esther correctly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how could they help a adolescent Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s grown-up years in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will join the paramilitary group, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to safeguard Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would subsequently establish the basis of the Israel's military.

Those are massive subjects to take on, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and the doctor, it’s even more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning Esther. For causes that must connect to narrative construction, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the couple's daughters, and delivers to a baby boy, Jimmy, in the early forties – and the majority of this novel is his story.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions return strongly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – of course – the city; there’s mention of avoiding the draft notice through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a duller persona than the female lead hinted to be, and the secondary characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are flat too. There are some nice episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of ruffians get battered with a support and a air pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a subtle writer, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his arguments, foreshadowed story twists and let them to accumulate in the viewer's mind before taking them to completion in long, shocking, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to disappear: think of the oral part in Garp, the finger in Owen Meany. Those losses resonate through the narrative. In this novel, a central person loses an limb – but we merely learn 30 pages before the finish.

Esther comes back late in the novel, but only with a final sense of ending the story. We do not discover the entire account of her life in the region. This novel is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it together with this novel – still holds up beautifully, after forty years. So pick up that instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but a dozen times as good.