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If some authors have an golden phase, in which they reach the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying novels, from his late-seventies breakthrough His Garp Novel to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were expansive, funny, compassionate works, linking characters he describes as “misfits” to social issues from women's rights to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing results, save in page length. His last book, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of subjects Irving had explored more effectively in previous books (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a 200-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were required.

Thus we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of expectation, which burns stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere four hundred thirty-two pages long – “returns to the world of The Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier novels, set primarily in an orphanage in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Wilbur Larch and his protege Wells.

The book is a letdown from a author who once gave such delight

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed termination and belonging with colour, humor and an total compassion. And it was a major novel because it moved past the topics that were becoming annoying tics in his novels: wrestling, wild bears, Vienna, sex work.

Queen Esther opens in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where Thomas and Constance Winslow welcome teenage ward the title character from the orphanage. We are a a number of decades ahead of the events of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still identifiable: even then addicted to anesthetic, beloved by his nurses, starting every address with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his appearance in the book is restricted to these early scenes.

The couple fret about raising Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a adolescent girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will become part of the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist armed organisation whose “purpose was to defend Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would later establish the foundation of the Israel's military.

These are huge subjects to address, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is not actually about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For reasons that must relate to narrative construction, Esther turns into a surrogate mother for another of the family's offspring, and delivers to a male child, Jimmy, in World War II era – and the majority of this book is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both regular and distinct. Jimmy relocates to – naturally – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the military conscription through bodily injury (His Earlier Book); a pet with a symbolic designation (Hard Rain, remember Sorrow from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, writers and penises (Irving’s throughout).

He is a duller figure than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary characters, such as students the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a confrontation where a handful of thugs get battered with a support and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a subtle novelist, but that is is not the problem. He has consistently reiterated his points, hinted at plot developments and enabled them to build up in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, shocking, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s novels, physical elements tend to be lost: recall the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those losses echo through the story. In this novel, a key figure loses an limb – but we merely find out 30 pages before the finish.

The protagonist comes back late in the story, but only with a final sense of concluding. We not once discover the complete story of her time in the region. This novel is a letdown from a novelist who previously gave such pleasure. That’s the downside. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – I reread it in parallel to this book – still stands up beautifully, four decades later. So choose that as an alternative: it’s much longer as the new novel, but a dozen times as great.