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If a few authors have an peak period, in which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then American novelist John Irving’s lasted through a run of several fat, rewarding works, from his late-seventies breakthrough The World According to Garp to the 1989 release Owen Meany. Such were expansive, humorous, big-hearted novels, tying characters he refers to as “misfits” to societal topics from gender equality to reproductive rights.

Since Owen Meany, it’s been waning returns, save in size. His last work, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages in length of themes Irving had explored more effectively in prior works (inability to speak, dwarfism, transgenderism), with a 200-page film script in the heart to pad it out – as if filler were necessary.

Thus we approach a latest Irving with caution but still a tiny spark of optimism, which burns hotter when we discover that Queen Esther – a only four hundred thirty-two pages in length – “revisits the setting of His Cider House Rules”. That 1985 book is part of Irving’s very best novels, located largely in an institution in Maine's St Cloud’s, managed by Wilbur Larch and his assistant Homer.

The book is a disappointment from a writer who in the past gave such pleasure

In His Cider House Novel, Irving explored pregnancy termination and belonging with richness, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a major book because it moved past the subjects that were turning into annoying tics in his novels: grappling, wild bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel starts in the imaginary town of New Hampshire's Penacook in the early 20th century, where Thomas and Constance Winslow adopt teenage ward Esther from St Cloud’s. We are a a number of years prior to the action of Cider House, yet the doctor stays identifiable: already dependent on the drug, beloved by his staff, opening every speech with “In this place...” But his appearance in the book is confined to these early parts.

The Winslows worry about raising Esther well: she’s Jewish, and “how could they help a teenage girl of Jewish descent discover her identity?” To address that, we jump ahead to Esther’s later life in the twenties era. She will be involved of the Jewish emigration to the region, where she will enter the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation whose “goal was to safeguard Jewish communities from opposition” and which would eventually establish the core of the Israel's military.

Such are enormous subjects to tackle, but having presented them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that the novel is hardly about the orphanage and the doctor, it’s even more disheartening that it’s additionally not about the titular figure. For motivations that must connect to plot engineering, Esther turns into a substitute parent for a different of the couple's children, and bears to a son, James, in the early forties – and the majority of this book is his tale.

And here is where Irving’s fixations return strongly, both common and particular. Jimmy moves to – of course – the city; there’s talk of avoiding the Vietnam draft through self-mutilation (Owen Meany); a canine with a symbolic name (Hard Rain, remember the canine from Hotel New Hampshire); as well as the sport, streetwalkers, novelists and penises (Irving’s recurring).

The character is a duller character than the heroine promised to be, and the minor characters, such as students the pair, and Jimmy’s instructor Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped too. There are some enjoyable episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a confrontation where a couple of bullies get battered with a support and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has never been a nuanced author, but that is isn't the issue. He has always reiterated his arguments, hinted at story twists and allowed them to accumulate in the audience's thoughts before bringing them to completion in lengthy, surprising, funny moments. For example, in Irving’s books, body parts tend to go missing: recall the speech organ in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences echo through the plot. In this novel, a major figure is deprived of an upper extremity – but we just discover thirty pages the finish.

She reappears late in the story, but merely with a last-minute feeling of ending the story. We never do find out the full story of her time in the region. This novel is a failure from a writer who once gave such delight. That’s the downside. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – upon rereading together with this book – even now remains wonderfully, four decades later. So pick up that instead: it’s double the length as the new novel, but a dozen times as enjoyable.