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If some novelists have an imperial phase, during which they reach the summit time after time, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four substantial, rewarding works, from his late-seventies hit The World According to Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, witty, big-hearted novels, linking characters he calls “misfits” to societal topics from feminism to reproductive rights.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, except in word count. His last work, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of themes Irving had examined more effectively in previous works (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to extend it – as if padding were required.

Therefore we come to a recent Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of optimism, which glows stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages – “revisits the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is one of Irving’s finest works, set primarily in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the subjects that were turning into annoying habits in his books: grappling, wild bears, Austrian capital, sex work.

The novel opens in the imaginary town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt young foundling the protagonist from the orphanage. We are a several decades prior to the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: already using anesthetic, adored by his nurses, opening every talk with “In this place...” But his presence in the book is confined to these opening scenes.

The couple worry about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter Haganah, the Zionist militant group whose “purpose was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would subsequently become the core of the Israel's military.

These are enormous themes to address, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is not actually about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on the titular figure. For causes that must connect to story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the family's children, and gives birth to a son, James, in World War II era – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s story.

And at this point is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both typical and distinct. Jimmy goes to – of course – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a significant designation (Hard Rain, meet the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s passim).

He is a more mundane character than Esther hinted to be, and the supporting characters, such as pupils the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a couple of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has always restated his points, telegraphed plot developments and let them to build up in the reader’s thoughts before bringing them to completion in extended, jarring, funny sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to disappear: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in His Owen Book. Those losses reverberate through the story. In Queen Esther, a central character suffers the loss of an upper extremity – but we just learn 30 pages before the finish.

The protagonist reappears toward the end in the story, but just with a last-minute sense of concluding. We never do find out the entire account of her life in Palestine and Israel. The book is a letdown from a novelist who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – revisiting it alongside this book – even now stands up excellently, four decades later. So read it as an alternative: it’s double the length as the new novel, but 12 times as enjoyable.