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If certain authors have an imperial phase, during which they hit the pinnacle consistently, then U.S. novelist John Irving’s extended through a sequence of four substantial, satisfying books, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were rich, humorous, warm books, linking protagonists he calls “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to termination.

Following His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been diminishing results, aside from in word count. His previous work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored better in prior books (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page screenplay in the heart to fill it out – as if padding were needed.

So we look at a new Irving with care but still a faint spark of hope, which glows hotter when we discover that His Queen Esther Novel – a only 432 pages long – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Rules”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier books, set mostly in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, run by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

This novel is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with vibrancy, humor and an total understanding. And it was a major book because it abandoned the themes that were becoming annoying habits in his novels: grappling, bears, the city of Vienna, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome 14-year-old ward the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a few years before the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Dr Larch remains recognisable: still dependent on the drug, adored by his caregivers, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is restricted to these initial scenes.

The family worry about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a young Jewish female discover her identity?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would eventually establish the basis of the IDF.

Those are massive subjects to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s likewise not about Esther. For causes that must relate to narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for one more of the Winslows’ children, and gives birth to a baby boy, James, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s narrative.

And at this point is where Irving’s fixations come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s mention of evading the military conscription through self-mutilation (His Earlier Book); a dog with a significant designation (Hard Rain, remember the canine from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller character than the heroine suggested to be, and the supporting players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s instructor the tutor, are underdeveloped also. There are some amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is not the issue. He has consistently reiterated his arguments, hinted at story twists and allowed them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to fruition in extended, surprising, entertaining moments. For example, in Irving’s novels, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In the book, a central person loses an upper extremity – but we just find out 30 pages before the end.

Esther reappears toward the end in the book, but merely with a last-minute sense of ending the story. We do not discover the entire story of her time in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that The Cider House Rules – revisiting it alongside this novel – even now remains excellently, four decades later. So choose that instead: it’s double the length as this book, but 12 times as enjoyable.