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If a few authors experience an imperial period, where they reach the heights consistently, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a run of several fat, satisfying books, from his late-seventies success His Garp Novel to the 1989 release Owen Meany. These were rich, funny, warm works, linking characters he refers to as “outsiders” to cultural themes from women's rights to termination.

Since A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, aside from in word count. His last work, the 2022 release The Chairlift Book, was nine hundred pages long of subjects Irving had delved into better in earlier books (mutism, restricted growth, gender identity), with a two-hundred-page film script in the middle to pad it out – as if extra material were needed.

Therefore we come to a latest Irving with reservation but still a tiny glimmer of expectation, which glows stronger when we learn that His Queen Esther Novel – a mere 432 pages – “returns to the setting of The Cider House Novel”. That mid-eighties book is among Irving’s finest novels, located mostly in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, operated by Dr Larch and his protege Homer.

Queen Esther is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such joy

In Cider House, Irving wrote about abortion and identity with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant novel because it abandoned the subjects that were turning into tiresome patterns in his works: grappling, ursine creatures, Vienna, prostitution.

This book opens in the fictional town of Penacook, New Hampshire in the twentieth century's dawn, where the Winslow couple welcome 14-year-old foundling Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of generations ahead of the action of The Cider House Rules, yet Wilbur Larch stays recognisable: still using the drug, respected by his staff, beginning every talk with “Here in St Cloud’s …” But his role in the book is confined to these opening sections.

The family are concerned about bringing up Esther properly: she’s of Jewish faith, and “how could they help a teenage Jewish female understand her place?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s adulthood in the Roaring Twenties. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to the area, where she will join Haganah, the Zionist militant organisation whose “goal was to defend Jewish communities from opposition” and which would later establish the foundation of the IDF.

Those are massive themes to take on, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s disappointing that the novel is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not really concerning the main character. For motivations that must relate to plot engineering, Esther ends up as a surrogate mother for another of the couple's children, and delivers to a son, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is Jimmy’s story.

And now is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both typical and specific. Jimmy moves to – where else? – the Austrian capital; there’s talk of evading the military conscription through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful title (the dog's name, meet the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

He is a more mundane figure than the heroine promised to be, and the minor players, such as pupils the two students, and Jimmy’s teacher the tutor, are one-dimensional also. There are some enjoyable set pieces – Jimmy losing his virginity; a fight where a handful of bullies get battered with a walking aid and a tire pump – but they’re brief.

Irving has not once been a nuanced writer, but that is isn't the problem. He has always restated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and enabled them to accumulate in the audience's imagination before bringing them to fruition in extended, shocking, amusing sequences. For instance, in Irving’s works, body parts tend to go missing: recall the oral part in Garp, the digit in Owen Meany. Those absences echo through the narrative. In Queen Esther, a key person is deprived of an arm – but we only find out 30 pages the finish.

She comes back late in the story, but just with a final impression of concluding. We do not learn the complete account of her experiences in the Middle East. The book is a failure from a novelist who in the past gave such delight. That’s the negative aspect. The good news is that Cider House – I reread it alongside this book – still holds up beautifully, four decades later. So choose that in its place: it’s double the length as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.