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If a few writers experience an imperial phase, during which they reach the heights consistently, then American writer John Irving’s lasted through a series of several fat, rewarding works, from his 1978 hit His Garp Novel to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. These were rich, funny, warm novels, connecting characters he refers to as “outsiders” to social issues from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning results, aside from in size. His most recent book, the 2022 release The Last Chairlift, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored more skillfully in earlier works (mutism, short stature, trans issues), with a two-hundred-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if filler were necessary.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with care but still a small spark of expectation, which burns hotter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just four hundred thirty-two pages long – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is among Irving’s top-tier novels, taking place mostly in an institution in the town of St Cloud’s, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who previously gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and belonging with colour, wit and an total understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the topics that were becoming repetitive patterns in his works: the sport of wrestling, bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther starts in the made-up community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in young foundling the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few years prior to the action of The Cider House Rules, yet the doctor stays identifiable: even then addicted to ether, adored by his staff, opening every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his appearance in this novel is limited to these opening sections.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther properly: she’s Jewish, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To tackle that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “purpose was to protect Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would eventually establish the foundation of the IDF.

Those are massive topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s frustrating that this book is hardly about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for another of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a baby boy, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this novel is his narrative.

And here is where Irving’s fixations reappear loudly, both common and distinct. Jimmy goes to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of dodging the military conscription through self-harm (Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic designation (the animal, meet the earlier dog from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as grappling, prostitutes, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a more mundane character than Esther suggested to be, and the minor characters, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are some nice scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a fight where a couple of thugs get battered with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not ever been a subtle author, but that is not the issue. He has consistently restated his ideas, telegraphed narrative turns and let them to gather in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in long, surprising, entertaining moments. For instance, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the tongue in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces reverberate through the narrative. In this novel, a major figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we merely learn thirty pages later the end.

Esther returns in the final part in the novel, but just with a eleventh-hour impression of ending the story. We not once discover the complete story of her life in Palestine and Israel. Queen Esther is a failure from a author who in the past gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading in parallel to this book – still remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So choose that in its place: it’s much longer as this book, but 12 times as great.