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If some writers have an golden era, where they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a run of several fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 breakthrough Garp to 1989’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, humorous, compassionate novels, linking characters he calls “outliers” to social issues from women's rights to termination.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been declining results, save in size. His last book, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages of subjects Irving had examined more skillfully in prior novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to pad it out – as if extra material were needed.

Therefore we look at a latest Irving with caution but still a small flame of optimism, which shines stronger when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is part of Irving’s very best novels, set primarily in an orphanage in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer Wells.

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

In Cider House, Irving explored termination and identity with colour, comedy and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a major novel because it left behind the subjects that were becoming annoying habits in his books: wrestling, wild bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

Queen Esther begins in the fictional community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old orphan Esther from the orphanage. We are a few years prior to the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: already using the drug, respected by his staff, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in the book is confined to these opening sections.

The family worry about raising Esther correctly: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent understand her place?” To address that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will join Haganah, the pro-Zionist armed organisation whose “purpose was to safeguard Jewish towns from opposition” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are huge topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud’s and the doctor, it’s even more disheartening that it’s likewise not focused on Esther. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for another of the Winslows’ daughters, and bears to a baby boy, James, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this novel is Jimmy’s story.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both common and particular. Jimmy goes to – of course – the city; there’s discussion of evading the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic name (the dog's name, remember the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, sex workers, writers and male anatomy (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller figure than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are flat too. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a few bullies get battered with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a delicate novelist, but that is is not the difficulty. He has always reiterated his ideas, foreshadowed plot developments and allowed them to accumulate in the viewer's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in long, jarring, amusing sequences. For case, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to be lost: recall the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces echo through the plot. In the book, a key person suffers the loss of an arm – but we only find out thirty pages later the finish.

Esther reappears in the final part in the novel, but just with a final sense of wrapping things up. We not once learn the complete story of her experiences in the Middle East. This novel is a disappointment from a writer who previously gave such joy. That’s the downside. The upside is that His Classic Novel – upon rereading together with this novel – still remains beautifully, 40 years on. So read it instead: it’s double the length as this book, but a dozen times as enjoyable.