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If a few authors experience an golden era, where they hit the pinnacle consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s ran through a series of four substantial, gratifying works, from his late-seventies success The World According to Garp to 1989’s Owen Meany. Those were generous, humorous, big-hearted novels, connecting characters he describes as “misfits” to societal topics from women's rights to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been diminishing outcomes, save in page length. His most recent novel, 2022’s The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages long of themes Irving had explored better in previous novels (selective mutism, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a lengthy screenplay in the center to fill it out – as if extra material were required.

So we approach a new Irving with reservation but still a faint spark of optimism, which glows stronger when we learn that Queen Esther – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the world of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 novel is one of Irving’s finest books, taking place primarily in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer Wells.

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

In The Cider House Rules, Irving explored abortion and acceptance with richness, humor and an all-encompassing understanding. And it was a significant novel because it left behind the topics that were becoming tiresome habits in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

This book starts in the made-up town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 1900s, where the Winslow couple welcome teenage orphan Esther from St Cloud's home. We are a several decades prior to the events of Cider House, yet Dr Larch remains recognisable: still using anesthetic, adored by his staff, opening every speech with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his presence in this novel is restricted to these initial parts.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female discover her identity?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s later life in the 1920s. She will be part of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will become part of the Haganah, the Jewish nationalist paramilitary force whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish towns from hostile actions” and which would subsequently become the core of the Israel's military.

Those are massive themes to tackle, but having brought in them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and Dr Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the main character. For causes that must relate to story mechanics, Esther ends up as a gestational carrier for a different of the couple's daughters, and delivers to a son, James, in 1941 – 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 – naturally – Vienna; there’s discussion of dodging the Vietnam draft through bodily injury (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (the dog's name, recall the earlier dog from The Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, sex workers, authors and penises (Irving’s recurring).

Jimmy is a duller persona than the heroine suggested to be, and the minor players, such as young people the two students, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are several amusing episodes – Jimmy losing his virginity; a brawl where a handful of ruffians get beaten with a support and a tire pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has not ever been a nuanced writer, but that is not the problem. He has always reiterated his points, hinted at plot developments and allowed them to gather in the audience's imagination before bringing them to resolution in lengthy, surprising, entertaining sequences. For instance, in Irving’s novels, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the tongue in The Garp Novel, the finger in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the plot. In this novel, a key character loses an limb – but we only discover thirty pages the end.

The protagonist comes back toward the end in the novel, but just with a last-minute impression of concluding. We not once do find out the full narrative of her time in the region. This novel is a failure from a author who in the past gave such pleasure. That’s the bad news. The upside is that Cider House – upon rereading alongside this work – yet stands up beautifully, four decades later. So choose the earlier work as an alternative: it’s double the length as the new novel, but far as great.