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If certain authors experience an imperial era, where they reach the summit repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s ran through a sequence of several substantial, rewarding works, from his 1978 success The World According to Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, witty, big-hearted works, connecting figures he describes as “outliers” to social issues from gender equality to abortion.

After His Owen Meany Novel, it’s been waning returns, save in size. His last work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was 900 pages in length of subjects Irving had delved into more skillfully in earlier works (inability to speak, restricted growth, transgenderism), with a two-hundred-page script in the middle to extend it – as if extra material were necessary.

So we come to a new Irving with reservation but still a small spark of hope, which shines brighter when we find out that His Queen Esther Novel – a just 432 pages in length – “revisits the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That 1985 work is one of Irving’s finest books, taking place mostly in an children's home in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Dr Wilbur Larch and his apprentice Homer.

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

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and identity with colour, wit and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major work because it moved past the themes that were becoming tiresome habits in his works: wrestling, ursine creatures, Vienna, the oldest profession.

Queen Esther opens in the made-up community of Penacook, New Hampshire in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow take in 14-year-old ward the title character from the orphanage. We are a few years ahead of the storyline of His Earlier Novel, yet Dr Larch is still familiar: still dependent on anesthetic, beloved by his caregivers, beginning every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his presence in the book is limited to these initial parts.

The Winslows worry about bringing up Esther well: she’s from a Jewish background, and “in what way could they help a young girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the Roaring Twenties. She will be involved of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will enter Haganah, the Jewish nationalist militant force whose “goal was to protect Jewish towns from Arab attacks” and which would eventually become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

These are enormous themes to address, but having presented them, Irving backs away. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is not actually about St Cloud's and Wilbur Larch, it’s all the more disheartening that it’s likewise not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve narrative construction, Esther turns into a substitute parent for another of the couple's offspring, and delivers to a son, the boy, in World War II era – and the lion's share of this novel is the boy's story.

And now is where Irving’s obsessions reappear loudly, both common and specific. Jimmy moves to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of evading the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a dog with a symbolic title (the animal, meet the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as wrestling, sex workers, authors and male anatomy (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a more mundane persona than the heroine promised to be, and the secondary figures, such as pupils Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s tutor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are some nice set pieces – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a few thugs get assaulted with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re short-lived.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is isn't the problem. He has repeatedly reiterated his ideas, hinted at story twists and enabled them to gather in the reader’s imagination before bringing them to resolution in long, jarring, entertaining scenes. For example, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to go missing: think of the speech organ in Garp, the hand part in Owen Meany. Those absences reverberate through the story. In this novel, a major figure is deprived of an upper extremity – but we only learn 30 pages later the finish.

She comes back in the final part in the book, but only with a last-minute sense of ending the story. We not once do find out the full account of her time in the Middle East. Queen Esther is a disappointment from a author who previously gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The positive note is that His Classic Novel – revisiting it alongside this book – yet remains excellently, 40 years on. So pick up it instead: it’s double the length as Queen Esther, but a dozen times as good.