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If some writers have an peak phase, during which they reach the heights time after time, then American writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of four fat, rewarding books, from his 1978 success Garp to 1989’s His Owen Meany Book. Those were rich, funny, compassionate novels, tying protagonists he calls “outliers” to societal topics from feminism to reproductive rights.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, except in page length. His previous work, 2022’s The Last Chairlift, was nine hundred pages long of topics Irving had examined more effectively in earlier novels (selective mutism, short stature, trans issues), 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 care but still a small flame of optimism, which glows brighter when we learn that Queen Esther – a just 432 pages in length – “revisits the world of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties work is one of Irving’s top-tier works, located largely in an orphanage in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

The book is a letdown from a writer who previously gave such delight

In His Cider House Novel, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with richness, wit and an comprehensive empathy. And it was a major novel because it left behind the themes that were turning into annoying tics in his books: the sport of wrestling, bears, Austrian capital, prostitution.

Queen Esther starts in the made-up town of the Penacook area in the early 20th century, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow welcome young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud’s. We are a few generations before the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch stays recognisable: still using the drug, adored by his staff, opening every address with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in this novel is confined to these initial sections.

The Winslows are concerned about parenting Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young girl of Jewish descent find herself?” To tackle that, we flash forward to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to Palestine, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist armed force whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the basis of the Israel's military.

These are enormous topics to take on, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is not actually about St Cloud's and Dr Larch, it’s still more upsetting that it’s also not focused on Esther. For motivations that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for a different of the family's offspring, and gives birth to a son, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this novel is his narrative.

And now is where Irving’s preoccupations reappear loudly, both common and distinct. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful title (the dog's name, recall Sorrow from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, prostitutes, authors and penises (Irving’s passim).

Jimmy is a more mundane persona than Esther promised to be, and the minor players, such as young people Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are one-dimensional also. There are several nice scenes – Jimmy deflowering; a fight where a couple of bullies get beaten with a crutch and a air pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is not the difficulty. He has repeatedly repeated his points, hinted at plot developments and let them to build up in the viewer's imagination before taking them to fruition in lengthy, jarring, funny scenes. For case, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those missing pieces echo through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a major figure suffers the loss of an limb – but we only discover thirty pages later the finish.

The protagonist reappears in the final part in the story, but just with a final sense of ending the story. We not once learn the full story of her experiences in the region. The book is a disappointment from a novelist who previously gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – I reread it alongside this work – yet holds up wonderfully, 40 years on. So pick up that instead: it’s double the length as this book, but 12 times as good.