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If a few authors have an imperial phase, during which they reach the summit consistently, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a series of several fat, rewarding novels, from his 1978 hit Garp to the 1989 release A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those were rich, witty, compassionate books, linking protagonists he calls “outliers” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

Following Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in size. His most recent work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had examined more skillfully in previous books (inability to speak, restricted growth, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to pad it out – as if padding were necessary.

So we look at a latest Irving with reservation but still a small spark of expectation, which glows stronger when we discover that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages long – “returns to the universe of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s very best novels, located primarily in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells.

The book is a disappointment from a author who once gave such pleasure

In Cider House, Irving explored abortion and identity with richness, humor and an total understanding. And it was a major novel because it moved past the subjects that were becoming annoying tics in his novels: wrestling, ursine creatures, the city of Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the imaginary village of the Penacook area in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome young ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a several years before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: even then addicted to the drug, beloved by his nurses, beginning every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in the book is limited to these initial scenes.

The couple fret about parenting Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “in what way could they help a adolescent Jewish girl discover her identity?” To answer that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be part of the Jewish migration to the region, where she will join the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “purpose was to protect Jewish settlements from opposition” and which would eventually establish the basis of the IDF.

Such are huge subjects to take on, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s frustrating that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s still more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning Esther. For reasons that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and gives birth to a son, James, in World War II era – and the bulk of this book is his story.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations return strongly, both typical and particular. Jimmy goes to – naturally – the Austrian capital; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a significant designation (the animal, remember the earlier dog from His Hotel Novel); as well as the sport, sex workers, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a less interesting character than the heroine suggested to be, and the minor players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor Eissler, are flat as well. There are a few nice episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a couple of thugs get assaulted with a support and a tire pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced novelist, but that is is not the issue. He has repeatedly repeated his arguments, foreshadowed plot developments and let them to accumulate in the reader’s mind before bringing them to fruition in long, shocking, funny moments. For case, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: remember the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses reverberate through the story. In this novel, a key character loses an arm – but we only find out 30 pages later the conclusion.

She returns toward the end in the story, but just with a eleventh-hour sense of ending the story. We never discover the complete narrative of her time in the Middle East. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this book – still stands up beautifully, 40 years on. So pick up that as an alternative: it’s twice as long as this book, but 12 times as good.