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If a few authors experience an imperial phase, during which they achieve the heights time after time, then American author John Irving’s lasted through a run of four fat, rewarding books, from his late-seventies success Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. These were expansive, humorous, big-hearted works, linking characters he describes as “outsiders” to societal topics from gender equality to abortion.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, aside from in page length. His previous book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored better in previous novels (selective mutism, short stature, transgenderism), with a 200-page screenplay in the middle to extend it – as if padding were required.

So we approach a latest Irving with reservation but still a tiny spark of expectation, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties novel is among Irving’s top-tier books, taking place primarily in an children's home in the town of St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

This novel is a letdown from a author who once gave such pleasure

In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about pregnancy termination and belonging with vibrancy, wit and an comprehensive compassion. And it was a major work because it moved past the subjects that were becoming annoying patterns in his works: grappling, bears, Austrian capital, the oldest profession.

This book opens in the made-up community of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where the Winslow couple take in teenage ward the title character from St Cloud's home. We are a a number of decades before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: still using anesthetic, respected by his nurses, beginning every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in the book is restricted to these opening sections.

The family worry about raising Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To answer that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be part of the Jewish emigration to the area, where she will enter the paramilitary group, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would eventually form the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are enormous topics to tackle, but having presented them, Irving dodges out. Because if it’s disappointing that this book is not really about the orphanage and Wilbur Larch, it’s even more disappointing that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must relate to story mechanics, Esther turns into a gestational carrier for one more of the Winslows’ children, and delivers to a son, Jimmy, in 1941 – and the majority of this story is Jimmy’s tale.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations come roaring back, both common and distinct. Jimmy goes to – naturally – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the military conscription through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the animal, recall Sorrow from His Hotel Novel); as well as wrestling, streetwalkers, writers and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

The character is a more mundane persona than the heroine suggested to be, and the supporting players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are several enjoyable scenes – Jimmy his first sexual experience; a brawl where a handful of bullies get assaulted with a walking aid and a bicycle pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a delicate novelist, but that is not the issue. He has repeatedly restated his ideas, hinted at narrative turns and enabled them to gather in the reader’s thoughts before bringing them to fruition in long, surprising, amusing scenes. For instance, in Irving’s books, physical elements tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those missing pieces resonate through the plot. In the book, a central figure suffers the loss of an arm – but we just find out 30 pages later the finish.

She reappears late in the story, but merely with a last-minute sense of ending the story. We not once do find out the entire account of her life in the region. The book is a failure from a author who in the past gave such delight. That’s the downside. The good news is that Cider House – upon rereading together with this book – even now remains wonderfully, 40 years on. So read it as an alternative: it’s twice as long as this book, but a dozen times as great.