The Last Chairlift

by John Irving

John Irving, one of the world’s greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years — a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics.

In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor.

Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.

John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time — among them, The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. A visionary voice on the subject of sexual tolerance, Irving is a bard of alternative families. In The Last Chairlift, readers will once more be in his thrall.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Unfinished, Coming Of Age, Mystery

Audiobook

First published October 18, 2022

About the author

JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.

Reviews

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Anthem For Our Times

The Last Chairlift isn’t a perfect novel. In fact, it is an awful mess at times. But it speaks to me, and it moves me.

Don’t read the book blurb. It doesn’t accurately describe The Last Chairlift.

So what is The Last Chairlift about?

Well….if it was easy to explain, the book blurb would be more accurate, but I’ll do my best....

On the surface, The Last Chairlift is about Adam’s life. He is born to an unwed single mother, Little Ray. He grows up with an eclectic family including a grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We follow Adam through his life including how he navigates the sexual politics of those he loves and also his journey to discover the identity of his father.

At first glance, The Last Chairlift is horrible. It is character driven, and it doesn’t have a strong plot. It should have been broken up into various books as it is almost 1,000 pages. Some of the topics aren’t that interesting (like wrestling…snooze fest). About 25% of the book is a screenplay which just doesn’t work (if you are really interested in a mixed media book that works check out Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies).

There are also many, many similarities with A Prayer for Owen Meany. Adam even lives on Front Street with his grandmother, the exact same street as in A Prayer for Owen Meany. John Irving is a talented enough writer to create a different setting for The Last Chairlift.

So all of that sounds awful right? Why in the world did you rate this book 5 stars? Have you lost your mind?

Probably. But that’s beside the point.

The Last Chairlift felt like home: the little snowshoer, the little English teacher, Little Ray, the ski patroller, Em, Matthew, Adam, Nora. These characters will stay with me for a long time.

The Last Chairlift feels like what Lessons by Ian McEwan should have been. Irving was able to elevate Adam’s problems from just Adam’s life to societal problems as a whole. The Last Chairlift is much more than just the troubles of one man.

But let’s talk about the symbolism, the deeper meanings of the book.

In The Last Chairlift, Adam talks about editing his book, that when you put forth your work, you can’t be afraid of ruffling a few feathers.

He also talks about his small hands. It reminds me of the song by Avicii, Wake Me Up.
“I tried carrying the weight of the world
But I only have two hands.”

Adam is one person. He wants to make changes in the world, but how much can one person do?

In the book, there are two characters who don’t speak: the grandfather and Em, the pantomimist. This really moved me. Aren’t there a whole bunch of people just talking, talking away? Isn’t that essentially Twitter? A whole bunch of people just talking and no one listening. In fact, these days corporations direct us to chat bots and to leave voicemails that will never be returned. Why try to engage when no one is listening? People just don’t try anymore. They retreat.

Em is incredibly interesting, and she has Nora who “interprets” her pantomime. However, Nora is not always faithful in representing Em’s thoughts. How many voiceless people groups are out there? Many groups have an advocate, but that message being conveyed by the advocate might become garbled or not truly represent the underlying voiceless or powerless group.

There is an event that happens, and Adam shows great bravery. However, the press doesn’t consider Adam a hero. For all of the people advocating for others without a voice or power, should they just give up? Even if they are successful, they usually don’t get any credit, and they don’t even know if what they are doing is working.

One of the characters in The Last Chairlift is Jasmine. She is one of Adam’s girlfriends. She is always calling her ex-boyfriends/husbands on the phone and chewing them out. Why was she in the book? Have you ever been caught up on something? You just can’t move past it. Is that our country? Is that our society? Are we caught up on the past so that we can’t move forward?

In The Last Chairlift, there is also a lot of piggybacking between two characters. At one crucial moment, one character carries the other. Is that what we, as a society, need to do? Do we need to carry each other?

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

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[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review in a day or two -- I loved it.

Here’s my Review….for this 912 page novel:

John Irving once said, “he’d be happy if he never had to drive a car again”. I can relate.
….The ex-wrestler — recently turned 80 — likes to walk. Me too.
….He cares about social issues. I care as well.
….John Irving is 6 feet 9 inches. I’m 5 feet 2 inches.
See? Lots in common!

Let’s be clear — I love John Irving. I experience his integrity with serious topics — and enjoy his unique luminous storytelling.

I like the tender purity that Irving shines over bizarre situations —and his idiosyncratic characters.
Irving’s imagination and witty funny-bones are grounded in social, political, and psychological values.
His passion for writing about intolerance towards others who don’t fit society ideals of the sexual norm, reminds me that human kindness still needs much protection. Same for children — Irving’s love for children and their needs for protection is enormously real.

Through Irving’s storytelling…..I tend to re-examine the chaos and unpredictabilities of life a little deeper.
I enjoyed being swept along in “The Last Chairlift” as equally as I have past books by Irving.
I took three weeks to read it…..(purposely) …..I didn’t want to rush the experience…..allowing time to contemplate the issues and fall in love with the new cast of extraordinary characters.
I made some new ‘small-size’ friends, to boot.
I appreciate the tribute and acceptance to small people.
I’m not exactly a ‘golly-green-giant’ size person myself.
Short people definitely get the raw deal in grocery stores. “A little help here, I say to the produce man….can you reach those radishes for me please?”.

….Adam Brewster…..(an only child - we don’t learn who his biological father is until late in the book)…grows up in a non-traditional family. From early childhood crushes, (Adam idolized his older cousin Nora: he loves her silly as a child —but Nora, older and a lesbian was in love with Emily- who went by the name Em). As Adam comes into his teen years —- we meet a variety of girls that Adam hooks up with…..
…the scaled nipple girlfriend, Sally Rose, Caroline, a plump girl, a wildflower, girls with physical deformities, paraplegic, a girl on crutches, the Twitcher, the bleeder, the writer…. Girls a little behind their age socially and sexually and girls who were a little bit ahead of their time socially and sexually…and more…

MORE importantly —is Adam’s relationship with Mr. Barlow. Elliot Barlow (Snowshoer) was the ‘Little’ English Teacher at Exeter High School where Adam went to school. Adam’s mom married Elliot hoping he would be great protection for Adam.
Turns out - Elliot — was a transgender — goes through the chsnge with surgeries later in this novel.
SHE turned out to be the best stepfather that Adam, or any lucky kid could ever dream of.

….Nana, (Adam’s Grandma), reads ‘Moby Dick’ to Adam for three years. They have a wonderful relationship.
….Ha…I ‘now’ have a new interest in ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville. I learn a lot about Moby Dick and have an appreciation I didn’t have at all until now.

….Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha are older sisters to Rachel, (‘Little Ray)….Adam’s mom. We come to — [kinda] —think of them as the mean sisters. Even Nana (we readers aren’t blind), know Nana loves her youngest daughter, Rachel best. (named after ‘The Rachel’ - ship in ‘Moby Dick’).

Little Ray is a slalom skier. For six months each year….she leaves little Adam with Nana to raise him while she works at a Ski resort teaching - mostly children to ski.

Molly, (Rachel’s girlfriend/wife), Nora, Em, (Nora’s girlfriend/wife), Henrik, (Nora’s younger brother),
Granddaddy Lew, etc. are other characters we will get cozy familiar with too.

Let’s face it — it’s not easy for me (a daily reader/ amateur reviewer)….to write a review for a book this size — hope some of you are forgiving.
What I do know — can say with a full heart — is I’m glad I read this book. I’m happy to still be thinking about.

I’ve heard less positive remarks …..
things like …”I use to like John Irving, until his later books got stale or bloated - or - whatever”….
BUT… that’s not me. I like every minute of spending time with John Irving’s creations…..
It’s been said many times before that John Irving …..works backwards from his endings….to where he knows the story should begin.
Having read many of his books I always have anticipation about his beginning and endings…..(especially the endings)…
And I must say….he KNOCKED the ending out of the park with the most PERFECT beautiful ending in “The Last Chairlift”.
I read several of the last few pages several times. (teary beautiful).

So….5 FULL stars from me
BUT…..
I’m also aware — ‘select readers’ will love it passionately as I did.
[I’d love to chat with those readers].
Unfortunately— it’s my hunch that most of my friends won’t want to bother with this 900 page book — and/or not everyone will be so enchanted.
Me….
….I loved the characters, the relationships, the diversity, social issues, the tragedies, the absurdities, the successes, the questions and mysteries than remain.

A few excerpts: (I saved more than DOZENS….but will only post a few):

“Were wheelchairs not allowed in the afterlife? I will never learn the rules for ghosts”.

“Elliot Barlow — being the English teacher he was —continued to be an influence in Adam’s life.
He told Adam that he wasn’t sure melancholy was good for the soul — ‘once you’ve seen ghosts, you’ve seen sufficient melancholy’, Elliot told Adam.
Adam was trying to figure out what those ghosts that he saw were trying to teach him.
He knew he came from a family of secrets (or lies by omission) so Adam figured he would wait the ghosts and his mother out”.

“I saw the rising sun strike the left side of my mom‘s face, but her face was the same grayish white as the hoarfrost on the seats and the safety bar of the chairlift; I put my arm around her shoulders and the snowshoer’s, but it was hard to look at them”.
“The chairlift was a four-seater, and we were three small people. I sat close between my mom and Mr. Barlow, holding them tight”.
“The chair started moving, without warning. It was a quiet ride, going down. You feel exposed on a chairlift going down a mountain; some people feel queasy. But I just held tight to my loved ones. The ride couldn’t have been long enough for me—I had so much to say to them. ‘You’re my one and only, too—you know that, don’t you? I asked my mom’. You really are ‘the only hero’”…..

“What do we want most when we’re children, and crave more when we’re old?
Consistency is what counts most. We want the people we love to be consistent, to stay the same—don’t we?”

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Think of your first good kiss. Was it life-changing, or was it no big deal? Do you remember how old you were? Did it matter, at the time, who gave it to you? Do you even remember who it was?
I’ll tell you this: when you’re thirteen and your mother gives you your first good kiss, you better hope someone matches it or eclipses it—soon. That’s your only hope.

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Autobiography just isn’t good or bad enough to work as fiction… Unrevised, real life is just a mess.

The overall format is one of a frame, with Adam Brewster opening by letting us know that this is the story of his life and times, then returning to turn out the lights when the tale has been completed. It is a family saga of Irving’s era, 50’s 60s, (Vietnam) 70s, 80s (Reagan, AIDS) et al, to the mad, reactionary violence of the 21st century. Adam Brewster, a writer and screenwriter, is our narrator for a look at the sexual politics of a lifetime, from his birth in 1941 to his later days some eighty years on.

Adam’s mother, Rachel Brewster (Little Ray), was a nearly-pro ski nut, who spent large parts of every year on the slopes, settling for work as an instructor. That left Adam in the hands of his grandmother for much of his upbringing, assisted by a passel of relations. He would hunger for time with his only known parent for much of his life, a core element of the novel.


John Irving - image from Outside Magazine

Readers of John Irving will recognize much that is familiar, from his prior work and his life. The novel is set in Exeter, New Hampshire, Irving’s home town; includes a benign stepparent teaching at Phillips Exeter (as his actual stepfather did); includes the narrator as a student there. Yep, Irving attended. There is wrestling, of course. Bears are limited to a kind of snowshoe shaped like their paws. A hotel figures large. There is an absent biological father, (Irving’s father was in the US Army Air Force. He never met him.); a mother with too many secrets; there is also reference made to an inappropriate relationship between an adult woman and an underage boy. (something Irving himself experienced); considerable attention is directed to feeling like, to being, an outsider.

”That’s just who you are, Adam,” my older cousin said. “There’s a foreignness inside you—beginning with where you come from. The foreignness is in you—that’s just who you are. You and me and Ray—we’re outliers.”

In fact, Irving turns the tables here, as Adam, as the only straight among the main characters, is the outsider in his own family, always the last to get things, he is nonetheless loved and supported by his sexually diverse relations.

His mother’s lifelong lover, Molly, effectively his stepmother, tells Adam, “There’s more than one way to love people, Kid.” It serves as a core message for the book and for Irving’s oeuvre. One of the main characters is transgender. He first wrote a sympathetic trans character in The World According to Garp, in 1978. So, when his son, born many years after the book was published, came out to his parents as trans, she knew her father would be completely supportive.

The politics of divergent sexuality through time manifests in diverse venues. Raucous comedic material performed at a comedy club in one era is considered too much for a later sensibility, a new puritanism of correctness. Safety for being different is a concern. Adam is very worried when his stepfather is out in their town dressed as a woman, even trails him sometimes in case a backup is needed. Reagan’s unwillingness to address AIDS until six years into his presidency is noted. Acceptance increases over time, but increased acceptance sparks increased resistance. A performer of material deemed unacceptable to some becomes a target for violence in a more disturbed climate.

In addition to the overarching theme of looking at sexual politics, sexuality is shown as far less important than the connection between people. Things that may seem sexual actually have a lot less to do with sex than connection. For instance, Adam and his mother often sleep together, in the slumbering, not biblical sense, well past the age where that is generally deemed ok. There is another relationship in which a straight man and a gay woman share a bed, sans fooling around.

There is hilarity aplenty, not least with Adam’s young sequence of damaged or damaging lovers. Lots of cringy LOL material there. I counted a dozen “LOLs” in my notes, some for entire chapters.

And then there are ghosts. Irving calls this a ghost story. I refer you to a piece on his site that addresses this directly.

Ghosts don’t just warn us about the future; they remind us of what we’ve forgotten about the past. All this is to say, I have a history of being interested in ghosts. And here come the ghosts again. In my new novel…the ghosts are more prominent than before; the ghosts, or hints of ghosts, begin and end the novel.

We all have ghosts we live with, but the ones here are visible, well, to some, anyway. They hang out in large numbers at a hotel in Aspen, but also turn up at home. The spectres are historical and familial, with some able to interact with the physical world (sometimes with LOL results) sometimes condemned to remain non-impactful. They do indeed, as noted above, remind us of the past, sometimes darkly so, but some offer direction and comfort. And Irving uses his behemoth of a novel to keep generating new ones. They pass over in a wide range of ways; lightning, murder on a stage, sudden avalanche, cancer, suicide, murder in a hotel, falling from a chairlift, leaping from a chairlift, death in war, et al. Falkner famously said “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” I guess it could be said for many characters in The Last Chairlift that even the dead are never entirely dead.

Adam’s profession offers ample opportunity for Irving (winner of a National Book Award AND a screenwriting Oscar) to present a wealth of material about writing, both for the screen and for print.

“My life could be a movie,” you hear people say, but what do they mean? Don’t they mean their lives are too incredible to be real—too unbelievably good or bad? “My life could be a movie” means you think movies are both less than realistic and more than you can expect from real life. “My life could be a movie” means you think your life has been special enough to get made as a movie; it means you think your life has been spectacularly blessed or cursed.
But my life is a movie, and not for the usual self-congratulatory or self-pitying reasons. My life is a movie because I’m a screenwriter. I’m first and foremost a novelist, but even when I write a novel, I’m a visualizer—I’m seeing the story unfold as if it were already on film.

--------------------------------------

Imagining the stories you want to write, and waiting to write them, is part of the writing process—like thinking about the characters you want to create, but not creating them. Yet when I did this, when I was just a kid at Exeter—when I thought about writing all the time, but I never finished anything I was writing—this amounted to little more than daydreaming.

--------------------------------------

you don’t see with hindsight in a first draft. You have to finish the first draft to see what you’ve missed.

--------------------------------------

Fiction writers like what we call truthful exaggeration. When we write about something that really happened—or it almost happened, could have happened—we just enhance what happened. Essentially, the story remains real, but we make it better than it truly was, or we make it more awful—­depending on our inclination.

There are many more—it is a very long book—but this last one in particular speaks very directly to Irving’s process. As noted up top, he returns to familiar themes and situations. In interviews he says that he begins with the same life experiences, but then changes where they go, how they morph, as if his creative process was to take the stem cells of his experiences and direct them to grow into a wide range of possible pieces. Same source, different outcomes.

It is not just the characters and situation that have morphed, it is the form as well. As Adam is a screenwriter as well as a novelist, and as this story is Adam’s, it is fitting that how he perceives the world makes its way into how he presents his story. There are long chapters that are written in screenplay format, complete with fade-ins, fade-outs, off-screen narration, closeups, wide-shots, the whole toolkit. It is an interesting tactic. I found it off-putting, but it does allow for a different approach to the material.

He does not just talk about writing per se, but incorporates into the novel considerable attention to his favorite book of all time, Moby Dick. (he has the last line of Moby Dick tattooed on his left forearm) This book opens with My mother named me Adam…, which resonates with Call me Ishmael and no less with …I am born from David Copperfield, Dickens being a particular Irving favorite. He sees himself as more of a 19th century novelist than a 21st century one.

…because those novels have always represented the model of the form for me. I loathed Hemingway. I thought Faulkner was excessive. Fitzgerald was ok, but lazy at times. I was enamored of the kind of novel all of my classmates at school despised.

References to Melville’s masterpiece (sometimes hilariously), Dickens, Ibsen, and plenty of others abound.

It is pretty clear that John Irving has had an interesting life. Eighty years old at the time of publication, he does not see The Last Chairlift as his last hurrah. In fact, he signed a three-book deal with Simon and Schuster, of which this was merely the first. He promises, though, that the next two will be a lot shorter.

Until then, this one will certainly suffice. Irving has lost none of his sense of humor. This book was more than occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. He has lost none of his feel for writing relatable humans. While some of the supporting cast are painted in broad strokes, to illustrate this or that sociopolitical issue of a given time, the main ones, and even hordes of second-tier characters are drawn with fine lines, and deep sensitivity. He has lost none of his vision, seeing clearly the currents of the eras considered, and how those have impacted social and political possibility for rounded humans who do not fit the square holes of a boilerplate majority. For all that Irving writes about people who are different, he makes it eminently clear that in matters that count we all share the same needs, to be loved, seen, and respected for who we are. Here’s hoping it will not be another seven years until we get to enjoy another of John Irving’s marvelous works.

…the dead don’t entirely go away—not if you see them on the subway, or in your heart.

Review first posted – February 18, 2023

Publication dates
----------October 18, 2022 - Hardcover
----------October 3, 2023- Trade paperback

I received an ARE of The Last Chairlift from Simon & Schuster in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.



This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Irving's personal and FB pages

Interviews
-----CBS Sunday Morning - John Irving: A Writer’s Life with Rita Braver – a delight - Sees himself as a 19th century writer
-----Late Night with Seth Meyers - John Irving Doesn't Write a Book Until He Knows How It's Going to End
-----Freethought Matters - Freethought Matters: John Irving
- video – 28:08 – with Ann Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker - Interview begins at 2:57 – focus on chairlift begins at about 18:00
-----NPR Podcasts - Book of the Day - 'The Last Chairlift' is John Irving's latest novel on sexual politics with Scott Simon – Audio – 10:26
-----Hazlift - ‘Hope is an Elusive Quality’: An Interview with John Irving by Haley Cunningham
-----Toronto Star - Hugging us back in the dark: John Irving on making us care about his characters, sexual politics, and the ghosts in his new book ‘The Last Chairlift’ by Deborah Dundas

Items of Interest from the author
-----Here Come the Ghosts Again on ghosts in his novels
-----CBS News - excerpt
-----Lithub - excerpt

My review of another book by the author
-----In One Person

Items of Interest
----- Moby Dick - Full text – with annotations
-----David Copperfield - Full text – with footnote annotations

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whew! I made it to Chapter 12 (two and a half hours of a 33 hour audiobook) but could not continue.

I think the world of John Irving and I grew up in Colorado and love to ski so I thought I would really enjoy The Last Chairlift.

Please read all the reviews from other readers. It seems like readers either really loved the book or couldn't make it through the book. The story rambled a lot and went into incredibly small details.

[Tammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Generally, I like Irving but this over blown novel about a small skier and her son left me cold. Irving revisits familiar territory; wrestling, small town New England, small mindedness and so on. It was just too much, too obvious, and entirely too long. It’s too bad.

[Maureen Carden · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I downloaded my ARC of The Last Chairlift I felt as if Christmas had come early with ten trees and the attendant presents. I was exhausted when I finished opening all of Irving’s gifts. I think for most of his life, John Irving has been a gift to those who read him; sometimes puzzling, sometimes generous, always loving.
I can immediately think of three Irving books that are on many people’s top ten list, or said to be the most influential book they have read, or the book of their generation. I’m not sure where The Last Chairlift will fit into these accolades. First off, readers might be defeated by the size, or some of the oddities of writing, or even the eccentricities of many of the characters.
I give this book as an easy five stars. All of the possible negatives above I mention, they are all part of the charm of The Last Chairlift.
Adam Brewster is born to a competitive slalom skier, Little Ray. Little Ray is a young single mother, a mother from an old family in Exeter, NH; a mother who will not divulge the identity of Adam’s father. The search for Adams father becomes a central theme of Adams life.
Adam’s grandmother mostly raises Adam as Little Ray goes north every winter to work as a ski instructor with her best friend, Molly, a ski patroller. He also has unpleasant aunts but lovely uncles and a few cousins-one of whom, Nora, becomes one of his closest friends and central to his life.
Elliot Barlow, Adam’s beloved small English teacher, stepfather, and eventual book editor is another character who becomes central to Adam’s life. I will always love Elliot Barlow. Possibly one of the loveliest, and loyal characters I have read of in years.
Adam sees ghosts. He sees them often and strongly, whether he is home or visiting the luxurious and venerable Hotel Jerome in Aspen. Adam goes to the Hotel Jerome looking for his past. Others in his life see the same ghosts, most do not. The scenes of Adam reading children's stories to the ghosts of the Hotel Jerome were tremendously touching.
John Irving is also an award winning screenwriter, so it makes perfect sense the Aspen scenes of this book are presented as a screenplay. Perfect sense, but a touch difficult to get used to as a reader. Then I shudder to think about how much longer the book would be without this device and I am fine with it. The screenplay scenes also help blunt some of the more emotional moments, yes, this can be good.
This book covers 80 years, so people die. Irving writes of death better than any other writer I have read. Sometimes in The Last Chairlift , it is shocking and heartbreaking, sometimes so very tender and gentle. Sometimes both. There is always a bit of foreshadowing so that one is not caught totally unprepared as has happened in Irving’s other books. Sobbing, smiling, sometimes at the same time. Yeah, Irving can write about death. He writes just as tenderly of love, the other side of the coin.
Irving is also a master of the comic, of the zany. He believes that humor is one way we can console ourselves. However, when he delves into horror of the AIDS crisis, he has to forgo his humor. He makes up for it with his empathy and his rage.
Irving revisits the horrors of the 1980’s, a time of unmitigated tragedy at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. President Reagan’s inability to admit the deadly disease even existed helped the epidemic to explode. Irving writes the most graphic and explicit descriptions of the deaths,both the physical and emotional, that I have ever read. It's difficult not to turn away from the pages. Don’t. Just don’t. He also writes of the people who refused to recognize reality, people who would only admit to AIDS as God’s punishment for homosexuality.
So here we come to it, the sexual politics of The Last Chairlift . There are gay characters, some lovely gay and queer characters who die for their lifestyles. There there is a transgendered character as glorious a character as Garp’s Roberta. There is a married couple, one a self-hating gay and the other a self-hating homosexual, with a gay daughter, Em, who stops speaking and becomes a pantomimist because of shock and heartbreak over the behavior of her parents. There is a comedy show in NY where Adam’s cousin Nora acts as the translator for Em, her girlfriend.
Parts of The Last Chairlift are disturbing. As in Garp, Adam is conceived through the rape of his father. This remains unacknowledged in both books. Understandable in Garp because this was the 1970’s, not so understandable here.
I also found it troubling how long Adam sleeps with his mother, although there was nothing of a sexual nature about it. Maybe I am jealous, maybe I still miss having the comfort and feeling of a parent lying next to you or child clinging to your back. Or, maybe it really is a very weird family dynamic with Little Ray and Adam.
I look at this review, then I remember the reviews I have read. It is almost as if each of us is reviewing a different book. The Last Chairlift is so massive in size, so epic in scope, it would be almost impossible to review the same book. I apologize for all I have left out, go read the other reviews. If you are a fan of John Irving or intrigued or intrepid enough to read this book, you will understand, you will be rewarded, and you will be left shaking your head.
One last thing, I still have no plan to read Moby Dick. Ever.
My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Simon and Schuster for an ARC for review purposes reflecting my opinions.

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

At 889 pages, John Irving’s new novel, “The Last Chairlift,” is an imposing brick of paper. This is, in every way, Irving cubed.

I have no objection to long books. My favorite novel last year was “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, which also clocks in at more than 800 pages. But Jeffers has a lot to say. Irving has a lot to say again.

That sense of deja vu stems from Irving’s devotion to a particular set of themes and motifs: hotels, wrestling, absent fathers, sexual gymnastics, etc. But the familiarity of those elements also speaks to his mountainous presence in contemporary literature since the late 1960s. Over a dozen years, starting in 1978, Irving published four remarkable novels in row: “The World According to Garp,” “The Hotel New Hampshire,” “The Cider House Rules” and “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” Popular and critically acclaimed movie adaptations have sewn Irving’s stories even more broadly into American culture.

Now, at the age of 80, Irving has published his 15th novel, another persistently familiar, partially autobiographical epic about a man enduring a series of erotic and violent episodes. Fans of the author’s work may appreciate the invitation to survey this vast rearrangement of his cherished tropes. Who, after all, isn’t cheered to see the old Christmas decorations brought down from the attic one more time? But everyone is likely to sympathize with the narrator of “The Last Chairlift,” who confesses on Page 856, “It seemed to me I was reading forever.”

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Chairlift is John Irving's fifteenth novel and he says it will be his last long work, this being 889 pages that kept me riveted throughout as it revealed eighty years of the history of this multigenerational tale. At its heart this was a love story and a lesson that the makeup of families may be very different and unconventional. Irving's writing has often been compared to Charles Dickens in its lessons in morality and the examination of political and social issues. The format of this book was stunning in that there are even two screenplays highlighted in the novel that served to dramatically advance the storyline as no other medium could. And John Irving is a storyteller as no other. In this book, he also uses magical realism with wonderful sections concerning the ghosts at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado.

The book opens with Rachel Brewster competing in Aspen, Colorado in 1941 in the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Although she didn't win any medals in that competition, she did come home to New England pregnant. Rachel, known as "Little Ray," became a ski instructor and raised her son Adam, "her one and only." Adam grows up in a family that defies conventions and norms but he remains interested in finding out who his father may be, knowing that the answers most likely lie in Aspen at the historic Hotel Jerome. Adam becomes a fiction writer of novels and screenplays.

"Fiction writers like what we call 'truthful exaggeration.' When we write about something that really happened--or almost happened, could have happened--we just enhance what happened. Essentially, the story remains real, but we make it better than it truly was, or we make it more awful--depending on our inclination."

I loved this book and I am sad that John Irving doesn't plan on writing another novel. However, I do have his large body of work from which to choose books that I haven't yet read. I would be remiss if I didn't speak to the beautiful cover. Obviously, with the title, The Last Chairlift, it is the chairlift that figured prominently in the story. That beautiful cover depicting the chairlift is what I boarded when I began skiing in Colorado's ski resorts, one of them being Aspen. As scary as it was to board the lift, I would worry about dismounting with my skis and poles ready for the jump. Depending on how high you wanted to go, you may have to board these lifts several times before you reached the summit. That may have been one of the reasons that I switched to cross-country skiing several years later.

"But sometimes when it snowed in New York City, they closed Park Avenue to traffic. It was magical to ski at night on Park Avenue in the falling snow. . . ."

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

'There's more than one way to love people.'

The legendary John Irving does it again with his latest massive work of fiction covering the lifetime of one man, the writer Adam Brewster. He is the son of an unwed mother, Rachel, who is a ski instructor and gone every winter, so Adam is mostly raised by his grandmother in the bosom of their extended family in Exeter, New Hampshire. Adam has a very unconventional family and through them, he learns to be very accepting of the many ways to live life and express love. 'We have to be who we are--we can only do what we do', says his mother Ray. The name of Adam's father is her closely guarded secret: 'Everything [is] about sex and secrets.' Irving has been called 'a visionary voice on the subject of sexual tolerance' and it shows in the subject matter of this novel--'fabulist fiction with a social conscience.'

The novel is not an easy read: it is extremely long, it is repetitive, with the story frequently circling around and back. Adam Brewster loves the use of semicolons in his writing and so obviously does John Irving himself. In fact, there seems to be a lot of John in his character, Adam--both born in 1942, raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, both became wrestlers and, I assume, skiers. It's interesting to look for these similarities in the story.

John Irving, at 80, has supposedly said this is his last long novel. I can understand that. As my dad used to say, 'At my age, I don't even buy green bananas.' So if that is the case, this is an epic novel to treasure from a great master.

I received an arc of novel from the author and publisher via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own. It is a great honor to read and review a novel from a favorite author.

[Mary Lourdes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance ecopy. of this title. Many years after I read "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and "Cider House Rules," I still remember the engrossing prose and sweeping stories that drew me in and resonated for years. THIS IS NOT THAT! I began reading with such high hopes as I have previously loved everything Irving has written. The story begins with Adam, the illegitimate son of an avid skier. Adam lives with his mom (but not during ski season) and grandparents a stone's throw from Exeter where his grandfather was the principal before turning mute. It is the 1950s, and the mystery of who his father is seems to be the trajectory of the story. It goes off the rails with WAY TO MANY TANGENTS and ALL THE SOCIAL ISSUES of the 20th century thrown against the wall to see what will stick!!! There is even an odd screenplay imbedded in the second half of the novel. The book is entirely TOO LONG, and after I while, I ceased caring about any of the characters. If you are or are not a fan of John Irving, do not read this book!

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hundertlagig genähte, viel zu große Alterspatchworkdecke in Regenbogenfarben

Dass dieser Roman episch breit wird, ist auf den ersten Blick erkennbar, denn mit dem Buch kann man Leute erschlagen. Nicht erwartbar war aber, dass hier nicht vordergründig Irvings Erzähltalent eskaliert, sondern schöde Redundanzen Programm sind. Diese existieren nicht nur einmal im Plot, sondern mindestens dreißig noch dazu schlechte Szenen werden zwanzigmal während der Geschichte in der Nacherzählung wieder hervorgezerrt. Das klingt nicht nur wie drei Dutzend demente Menschen, die dieselbe Story immer und immer wieder erzählen, das gipfelt schon in übelster Leserquälung. Aber hier ist noch immer nicht genug mit den Redundanzen, so etwas habe ich überhaupt noch nicht erlebt, Irving erzählt auch die Ringergeschichte aus Garp und wie er die Welt sah nochmals in einer Variation nach, er plagiiert und remixt seine eigenen Werke. Was für eine Verschwendung meiner wertvollen Lesezeit, muss ich hier konstatieren, denn trotz meines mittleren Lesetempos habe ich fast zwei Wochen für die mehr als tausend Seiten gebraucht. Ansonsten ist natürlich nicht alles schlecht in diesem Alterswerk, ganz das Schreiben verlernt hat Irving selbstverständlich nicht. Aber nun zu den Details:

Die Affinität des Autors zu Österreich und dem Schifahren kommt sehr stark durch. Da ich mit sechs Jahren (für Österreich sehr spät) Schifahren und mit acht Jahren erst Schwimmen lernte, ist das natürlich ganz mein Metier, zudem liefen bei uns auch jedes Schirennen und Schisprung am Wochenende im Fernsehen. Insofern machte mir das Namedropping und die Wintersportfigurenwuselei auf den ersten 150 Seiten wenig aus, da ich sogar die erwähnten Familien aus dem TV kenne. Leute mit wenig Liebe zu diesem Sport, werden sich wahrscheinlich bereits in dieser Phase tödlich langweilen.

Bis Seite 200 passiert fast gar nichts Essentielles. Erst bei der Hochzeit der Mutter mit dem geschätzten Stiefvati, die Protagonist Adam miteinander verkuppelt hat, nimmt die Story endlich mit einem Paukenschlag an Fahrt auf, dann ist Irving wieder in seinem Element und lässt die Katastrophen und Hoppalas wie einen Hurricane an einem Punkt der Ereignisse auf seine Figuren los. Opa wird bei der Feier vom Blitz erschlagen, Adam findet raus, dass seine Mutter lesbisch ist, indem er sie mit der Brautjungfer im Bett erwischt und stellt fest, dass die ganze Verbindung eine Alibibeziehung ist, eben nicht nur, weil sein Stiefvater schwul sein soll, wie die bösen, bigotten Tanten schon die ganze Zeit ätzen und vermuten.

Dann wird das bewährte Garp Rezept ausgepackt, peinliche Penisverletzung beim ersten Geschlechtsverkehr. Die Dimension der sexuellen Hoppala-Erfahrungen ist in diesem Roman zu Beginn sehr ungewöhnlich und tendiert anschließend während der gesamten Geschichte leider ins Bösartige, weil die Ereignisse in der Nacherzählung ständig wieder hervorgezerrt und die Frauen auch noch von der Familie verhöhnt werden: Eine fette Freundin, die sich vor dem Gespenst des Großvaters in die Dusche flüchtet, wird dort eingequetscht und es kam zu nix, eine flog die Stiege hinunter, weil sie einen Krampf im Bein hatte und es kam zu nix, dann die Penisverletzung beim Akt, ergo Coitus interruptus, mit einem Gips in der Extase verprügelt.

Bald kommt raus, dass ein Großteil der Familie nicht nur aus Lesben und Schwulen besteht, sondern es wird noch mehr aus dem Spektrum LGBTQ mit in den Plot hineingenommen. Der Stiefvater Adams, namens Elliot, entpuppt sich als Crossdresser und später als transsexuell. Ein kluger zeitgeistiger Schachzug des Autors, solche aktuellen Themen zu verwenden und da kann sich Irving auch gleich mit seinen sehr bevorzugten sexuellen Inhalten beschäftigen, die er auch schon in älteren Werken sehr gut zu beschreiben wusste.

Bei all der Beschwörung von Inklusion und Toleranz in diesem Setting stößt es mir sauer auf, dass keine einzige weibliche heterosexuelle Figur irgendwie positiv konzipiert und gezeichnet ist. Die Demütigung von Adams Partnerinnen geht weiter und wird immer wieder von den ach so diskriminierten Protagonisten im Namen der Diversität hervorgezerrt. Okey die zwei bösen, bigotten Tanten als Kontrapunkt müssen sein, aber bei Adams Freundinnen gibt es neben der Fetten, der Gelähmten, dem Penisbruch und der Eingegipsten noch eine Bluterin, die Myome hat und immer alles vollblutet, eine ältere Freundin, die beim Erscheinen des Gespenstes des Großvaters während des Verkehrs vor Schreck den Darm entleert und uriniert und so weiter. Diese inflationäre Häufung peinlicher und bösartiger Darstellungen von Hetero Frauen in der Figurenkonzeption ist nicht nur sehr fies, sie wiederholen sich auch und sind fast das Zentrum der Redundanzen. Denn immer wieder werden diese uralten Missgeschicke von der LGBTQ-Familie zum Amüsement hervorgezerrt und wird durch Bashing der Exfreundinnen permanent abgelästert. Genauso habe ich mir die Toleranz einer diskriminierten Minderheit NICHT vorgestellt, denn Toleranz ist ja keine Einbahnstraße.

Nebenbei wird natürlich in Dialogen der Familie die Klaviatur der Opferpyramide des intersektionalen Feminismus ordentlich bespielt, da wird ernsthaft diskutiert, wer denn jetzt die diskriminierteste Gruppe von allen ist: ledige Mütter, Lesben oder Transsexuelle. Nicht falsch verstehen, wir reden hier von einer bevorzugten weißen, sehr wohlhabenden Oberschicht, die sich alle nicht zu schade sind, von ihren bigotten, gehassten, bösartigen Verwandten, die sie verachten, unzählige Häuser zu erben. Die noch nie einen Tag wirklich arbeiten mussten, um sich selbst zu versorgen, die immer Häuser überall besitzen, in denen sie unterschlüpfen können, die nur arbeiten müssen, wenn es ihnen Spaß macht und sich durch die Welt treiben lassen können. Leider wird hier von Irving kein einziges Mal eine kleine kritische Reflektion eingebaut, zum Beispiel in Form einer sympathischen Figur eines oder einer wirklich unterprivilegierten Schwarzen aus der Arbeiterklasse.

Das Ganze eskaliert noch viel mehr, denn erstaunlicherweise sind alle LGBTQ-Protagonisten sehr übergriffig und boshaft bei völlig fremden Leuten, die sie als konservativ einschätzen, die eigentlich primär zuerst nur konsterniert sind, weil sie von ihnen ungewollt berührt und körperlich in die Zange genommen werden. Diese Grenzverletzungen passieren mehr als einmal. Bei solchen durchaus verständlichen Irritationen faseln die Figuren der Familie ständig von unterdrücktem Hass und Diskriminierung, wenn sich die Leute nicht ungewollt von Fremden anfassen lassen wollen, während sie selbst Kirchen anzünden wollen, wenn sie ihren Willen nicht kriegen und eine Exfreundin von Adam verprügelt werden soll.

Das geht sogar so weit, dass nach Meinung der Familie Ronald Reagan den Tod verdient hat. Okey, man muss den republikanischen Präsidenten Reagan durchaus kritisieren, denn empathisch war er in der AIDS-Krise tatsächlich nicht, aber dass er den Tod verdient hätte, weil er was machen hätte können. Also wirklich! Kondom überziehen, kann nicht Ronnie machen. Da ist sich Irving dann auch nicht zu blöd, indem er als Gegenbeispiel das schweizerische Wengen als AIDS-freies Eldorado herbeifantasiert, das Ende der 80er Jahre noch nichts von der Seuche gehört hat. Bei wem hat Irving da eigentlich recherchiert? Bei 65-jährigen sexuell inaktiven Sennerinnen?

Was für ein Mumpitz! Ich habe von 1987-1990 in der Schweiz und speziell im Berner Oberland, in einem touristisch relativ unerschlossenen Nebental von Wengen gearbeitet. Dort war AIDS unter dem Servicepersonal das Riesen-Thema. Während der amtsärztlichen Untersuchung, die für eine gültige Arbeitsbewilligung unumgänglich war, wurden neben einem TBC-Röntgen und einem Bazillenausscheider noch weitere Untersuchungen durchgeführt. Wir mussten uns in Buchs (Sanitätsstation Österreich/Deutschland/Schweiz) splitternackt ausziehen und dann wurden wir im Pulk durch die Stationen getrieben. Unsere Haut wurde abgesucht und ein kurzer gynäkologischer Blick geworfen. Da dieses Prozedere mit den vielen Menschen in Buchs so demütigend war, fuhr ich ab dem zweiten Mal quer durch das Berner Oberland nach Brigg an die italienische Grenze und konnte dort entspannt ohne andere Patienten mit der Amtsärztin über diese Untersuchung plaudern. Na was glaubt Ihr, haben die alle auf der Haut der einreisenden Gastarbeiter gesucht? Genau, Karposi-Sarkome.

Ansonsten wird die AIDS-Krise, die LGBTQ-Community New Yorks und die politischen Zerwürfnisse der 80er Jahre in den USA zwar extrem tendenziös aber recht anschaulich beschrieben.

Die Drehbücher, die in den Plot integriert waren, haben mich ebenso gestört, vor allem im Lesefluss. Zuerst wollte ich sie überblättern, aber dann passierte in Aspen unheimlich viel in diesen zwei Abschnitten. Ursprünglich dachte ich noch, das wäre die Fiktion des Schriftstellers Adam, aber da rauskam, dass alle Szenen, so passiert sind, waren sie relevant für den Plot, der ab diesem Zeitpunkt dann zwar wieder rasant, aber gehörig mit Unwahrscheinlichkeitsantrieb durch die Geschichte schlittert. So viele Dramen mit Verwicklungen und Toten auf einmal und in so kurzer Zeit kumuliert, sind genauso wie die inflationären Sexmissgeschicke der Freundinnen einfach total unrealistisch. Die vielen Gespenster die sich im Hotel Jerome herumtummeln, nerven unheimlich, aber sie ergeben letztendlich irgendwie Sinn.

Das Finale des Romans ist dann aus der Kategorie: leider verpufft.

Fazit: Redundanzen hasse ich am meisten und wenn das Werk dann dadurch auch noch viel zu lang ist, fühle ich mich betrogen. Ich habe es bereut, so viel Lesezeit in diesen Roman investiert zu haben, den ich ein bisschen unter Mittelmaß einordne. Es ist eigentlich sehr schade, dass mein bisher ausschließlich positiver Eindruck vom Autor derart revidiert werden muss. Mein Tipp: Lest einen anderen Irving. 2,5 Sterne sehr wohlwollend auf 3 aufgerundet, aus Sentimentalität zum Irving.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a rambling, at times stream of thought way, Adam tells the story of his life as it plays against the last almost 80 year period. Born to a single Mom in 1941 and raised in what might politely be called an unconventional family, his is a clear-eyed, at times hilarious portrait. One that requires a great deal of patience on the part of the reader. Since John Irving has called this his last big book, I think his publishers just let him rip without changing a word, or a sentence, or a paragraph, sometimes with frustrating repetition. But the rewards outweigh those detriments, and I'm glad I finished it but not without a lot of prodding.

[Jerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely the worst book I will read this year.
Kudos to me able to finish over 900 pages

[Mark Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love John Irving and I loved this book. Why do I only give it one star? Because if you're not a John Irving fan, or maybe haven't read any of his books, I think this might be a tough one for you to like. It's got more Irving than ever and TBH it's a handful. Of course, those defects are the things I love about him and his writing.

What is this book about? I guess it's about being John Irving and living in America from the early 50's to the present. Oh you were hoping for a plot? Hmm I think he might have overlooked that in this particular book, but that's okay with me.

The most noticeable thing about Irving is his library of tics - things he just can't help but trotting out and using and reusing. (No, I don't think they are symbols, themes, metaphors. I think they are just authorial compulsions.) Examples that pop up repeatedly in this book include:

o Small people
o LGBTQ people and problems
o Jocks, M+F
o Single sex schools, e.g. Exeter
o Wrestling
o Physical injuries and mayhem
o Ghosts
o Crossdressing
o Writing and writers
o Movies/Noir
o Incestuous relationships
o Hotels
o Skiing/Skiers
o Moby-Dick and other classics (e.g. Dickens)
o Blood
o Vienna
o The horror of living in a world with Republicans

A lot to like in that list.

This is a monstrous book, and of course half of the 900 pages would have been cut had Irving had a judicious editor, but he can't help repeating phrases he loves. Any sentence that finishes a paragraph and has the ring of an epigram is a candidate to pop up over and over.

Irving is pretty old, and who knows, this may be the coda to a pretty great career. I'm happy to let him exercise some indulgence.

But what's good for me is probably not good for you, sorry!

[Linden · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Irving can really tell a story; his novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, is one of my all time favorites. This one starts out with Ray, a 19 year old who gets pregnant at a 1941 ski competition. She gives birth to Adam, and her New England family is embarrassed at her status as an unwed mother. (I did find it hard to believe that a young woman in 1941 would deliberately try to get pregnant from a one night stand with someone she didn’t know.) We meet many unique characters in this novel, including Ray’s judgmental sisters, her incompetent and incontinent father, her partner, Molly, and quite a few others. We learn perhaps more than we want to know about Adam’s romances and his relationship with the wonderful teacher who will become his stepfather. I did think that the book, at 762 pages, was too long, and wondered if an editor might have suggested some cuts had Irving been a less well-known author. Three and a half stars. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the ARC.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book by this long established author that I have read. It was hyped as his first novel in seven years so I thought I would give it a try. Hopefully, his earlier works are much better than this. It was dull and a slog to read. The characters were not interesting and the writing style reminded me of someone trying to make a possible interesting story dull and lengthy. Other reviewers have loved the book so I will leave it to you to decide if it is for you. It definitely was not for me.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog.

[Carol]

Suffice it to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this long read. Loved the characters, each and every one. That's it in a nutshell. That's all she wrote.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new book by John Irving? Yes, please. I was happy to be able to read this new novel because I have loved some of John Irving's ealier works: A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules were all great books. John Irving turns 80 this year - what an accomplishment to be releasing a new novel at age 80! This tome is 912 pages and follows the life of Adam Brewster.

I can't begin to explain this book, so you'll have to read the book blurb for a description. Suffice it to say the book is good, the characters are memorable and funny at times. There are ghosts in the story that some can see and others cannot. There are a lot of sexual politics and the characters are a mix of diverse gender identities. The book is character driven and the characters are fully developed so I felt immersed in their lives - and I think I have a better understanding of various gender identities because of that. This is not a traditional family Adam Brewster has spent his life with, but it is a family filled with love and caring. There is a screenplay within the book as well. One of the central themes was Adam's quest to find out who his father is and since his mother won't tell him, it's not an easy quest to undertake.

This book is very long and at times repetitive. Sometimes I was bored and other times I was interested. There is never any great action going on to keep me glued to the page, but yet there was something about the book that kept me reading. There is a screenplay within the book as well. One of the central themes was Adam's quest to find out who his father is and since his mother won't tell him, it's not an easy quest to undertake.

The Last Chairlife is not my favorite book by John Irving but I am glad I read it. Some of the characters will stay in my mind for along time. Thanks to Simon & Schuster through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on October 18, 2022.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel as if I have been reading this meandering book forever. It has been my companion through the first few days of my initial recovery from a broken wrist. It provided enough distraction through several endless sleepless nights. However, I couldn't attach to the characters and was often mystified as to why on earth was that included? Alas, this is no "A Prayer for Owen Meany," which I truly loved. There is a social commentary of sorts but my overall take on it is that it didn't flow, or sweep me away like his other novels.

[Claudia · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF
I read about 20-25% of this very long book and set it aside. I cannot bring myself to go back to it. This thing is so drawn out and boring. The characters have the potential to be interesting, but there is so much filler that I can hardly wade through it. The mother got married, and the wedding dragged on for at least 100 pages. It seemed none of it was going anywhere.
I hate to give up on a book, but I just cannot go back to this one.
Irving is a famous author, and I had never read his work before. I'd imagine it must be a lot better than this novel.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Martie Nees Record · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre: Literary Fiction/Sexual Politics
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: October 18, 2022

At the 1941 National Downhill and Slalom Championships in Aspen, Colorado, skier Rachel Brewster competes in the slalom event. Little Ray, as she is known, doesn’t win. However, she does manage to become pregnant. Irving begins his new novel with Little Ray’s son, Adam, journaling his life. Young Adam is sweet yet defiant of his mother. He is determined not to learn to ski. She is forever telling him to stop wringing his little hands. This theme of defying authority runs deeply through the novel, along with those of neurosis and comic obsession. Little Ray adores, for example, Adam’s short stature, and that of his step-father.

John Irving is one of the prominent novelists of our time—it is a terrifying honor to be asked to review his work. His most recent book, which he wrote at the age of 80, is a 912-page tale laced with his recognizable brand of subtle detail and humorous dialogue. As usual, his characters are oddballs. They have flaws and quirks and sometimes they're annoying or downright unlikeable, but you end up loving them anyway. Many of the topics touched upon, including sexual nonconformity, are exactly what you’d expect from Irving.

One of my favorite chapters is “The Lesbians’ Children,” which seems to encapsulate the spirit of the novel. Now a gay mother, Little Ray, and her lover, Molly, live happily together with Little Ray’s gay husband. Little Ray’s son, Adam is straight. His best friend is his older cousin Nora, who is gay. As a young teen, Adam needs to close his ears, and curious mind, to the loud orgasms of Nora’s lover, Em. Eventually, Adam will marry Em. Irving refuses to cage his characters’ identities, weaving theses threads together with such wit and empathy, it’s hard to imagine the plot unfolding any other way. Ahead of his time, Irving’s 1978 classic, "The World According to Garp," featured a rare example of a sympathetic trans character. The world may at last be catching up.

With such a lengthy novel, it’s not surprising to see it grow sluggish in places. Probably fewer chapters could have resolved this problem. But come on, it’s John Irving. The man is famous for long, strange novels. Did I mention the ghosts? Or the fateful lightning strike? Just get the book and sink in.

I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

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[Debra - can't post any comments on site today grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Irving is such a gifted and talented writer. He has the knack for writing characters that are well, interesting, and odd. They are quirky and original and somehow Irving transports us into their lives and their relationships with others.

Adam's mother, Rachel Brewster a.k.a. Little Ray is a slalom skier who never makes it on the podium. She instead becomes pregnant with Adam and returns to her home in New England to become a ski instructor. Adam grows up in an interesting family. Adam is left with his grandmother, Nana, while his mother teaches skiing. His grandmother loves Moby Dick and even named his mother after a character in the book.

As Adam grows, we see his relationships with girlfriends, his family, his cousin Nora, Elliot Barlow (what a wonderful character) and others in his life. Again, there are quirky characters, odd characters, and interesting characters. Some have impacted his life more than others. Many are dealing with their own lives and issues. Then there are the ghosts....

Adam goes looking for answers. He does not know who his biological father is, so he goes looking at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen where he was conceived. Will he find what he is looking for?

This is a BIG book. It's long in length - I felt it - and covers a man's life. It took me quite a bit of time to read this book. Like other reviewers, I believe some more editing was in need. I don't mind reading long books, but when you feel the length, it begins to feel like work. Having said that, I enjoyed this book and continue to marvel at Irving's beautiful writing. He tackles several subjects in this book through his cast of characters.

I read several books while reading this book. I enjoyed reading a little bit of this book at a time. This book will take some time to read, even though lengthy, I'm glad I read it.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I do have mixed feelings about this work.
I hated it and I loved it, but I think that this one will not stay with me, like “A Prayer for Owen Meany” did, which is one of my top 10 favourite books of all time, or “The World According to Garp” or “The Cider House Rules”. There is nothing remarkable about this one.
John Irving is one of my top writers.
His is now 80 years old and lives in Toronto (my hometown).
I absolutely love his skills, imagination and specially his humour. I like how he touches sensitive topics without preaching or prejudice.
This book has quite a number of quirk characters and I was very pleased with them, although I can’t say that they were remarkable or unique. I have met them before. They were too familiar. The territory is too familiar.
This book is massive!
And so repetitive.
Unfortunately I did not feel engaged with the storyline. It’s just too long, covering 8 decades of the main character’s life, with light mention of real facts (Vietnam, Ronald Reagan, AIDS, Roman Catholic Church, the 1989 massacre in Montreal… even Trump).
Although I felt bored most of the time, I did enjoy some parts.
One thing that I’m taking is a wish to re-read Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, a book that I loved during my teens, a translated version into Portuguese, so I wonder how I would feel about it, reading it in English for the first time, now that I’m almost 59 years old.

I did read the book while simultaneously listening to the audiobook (except for the last two chapters). The narration was well done, but if played at normal speed it will put you to sleep (I liked it at 1.25x).

Hardcover: 912 pages
319k words (estimated reading time: 26 to 29 hours)
Audiobook: 32.8 hours at normal speed (Narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Chris Henry Coffey, Piper Goodeve, Em Grosland, Graham Halstead, Chanté McCormick, Natalie Naudus, Aida Reluzco, Pete Simonelli, Natasha Soudek, Travis Tonn, Jacques Roy, Raquel Beattie, Aden Hakimi)

Some word count:

Ski/skiing = used over 500 times
Mother = over 500 times
Ghost = 374
Small(ness) = 319 times
Writer = 245
Sweetie = 238
Hotel Jerome = 221
Movie = 192
Kiss/Kissing = 189
Clothes = 150
Penis = 101
Moby-Dick = 100
Sex = 98
Sexual = 89
AIDS = 70
Weight = 67
Orgasm = 55
Pound = 38

Ronald Reagan was mentioned 91 times and Trump was mentioned 20 times.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed Feelings

I have mixed feelings about this book. But overall I liked it. More about that below.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!

I’ve used the Goodreads spoiler tags, but I’m unsure if they always work.

So my usual warning about spoilers applies here.

John Irving, A Favorite Author

I didn’t need to read all the blurbs praising John Irving, as I’m already a fan.

The three of his books I read previously were favorites. These were The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and Cider House Rules.

So I knew when this appeared on Netgalley I had to request it.

This book didn’t quite live up to those. But it’s well worth reading.

This one seemed more autobiographical than his other books (except perhaps "Garp").

Book Sections

The first twenty percent of the book details the childhood of our main character, writer Adam Brewster, in Exeter, New Hampshire. (I couldn’t help thinking he was a standin for John Irving, as there are many similarities in their biographies).

Adam’s old New England family is full of eccentric characters, to put it mildly. Many of them are gay. Most of them are loving.

Anyway a large part of this first section is devoted to the wedding of Adam’s mother, ski instructor Rachel Brewster.

The descriptions of the wedding were a nonstop laugh riot. They were hilarious. An old Austrian zither player provides the music, the “infant emeritus” (Adam’s senile diapered grandfather) wanders around in a daze, etc. It’s all extremely funny.

The next part of the book details young Adam’s succession of comically unsuitable girlfriends.
This is amusing at times, but much less so than the wedding scenario. One has an injured hand and clubs him in the chest with her cast during intimate moments; another has a bad leg that acts up
when they are in bed and then she falls down the stairs; another is just nuts, etc. etc.

The rest of this sprawling (912 pages) and at times, meandering, book details Adam’s life with his mother, who lives in Vermont; his stepfather;
his extended family; his school friends; his marriage to a pushy, conventional woman who’s a bad match for him, etc.

Eventually, when he is older, he does end up in a good marriage. But it happens in a very roundabout way.

Bookends

My favorite sections of the book were the first section (with the wedding), which I’ve already described, and the last
twenty percent. Part of the last section packs a punch, although the book ends quietly.

Part of the deliberate bookending structure, is that both the first and last sections of the book feature weddings. WARNING: MINOR SPOILER AHEAD: Also the author’s mom is featured in both sections.

Swan Song

This book feels like the aging Irving’s swan song (and I don’t mean the novel by Robert McCammon).

It’s a poignant, moving (and also very funny at times) meditation on aging, loss, mortality, and death.
There are a lot of ghosts.

A secondary theme is: what is a good death?

Another theme is the influence of one's childhood on the rest of one's life. "You never get over your childhood until you are under the train" ("under the train" is one of Irving's metaphors for death).

Irving signals that death is the book’s focus by opening the book with the following epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure:

If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms

And the author ends with the following line:

 I try not to think about the vanishing.

What I Liked

I liked much about this book.

John Irving writes with his trademark humor, much of it foul mouthed and bawdy.

I didn’t object to the use of foul language here, as it’s part of the humor, and it does reflect the way people really talk. (I don’t like foul language when it serves no purpose than to show how “cool” the author is. Irving doesn’t use it that way).

The characters were all well drawn, vivid, and very memorable. Most were quite eccentric. They felt like real people that I knew.

I liked the loving nature of Adam’s family.

I liked that the book was about death and mortality. Perhaps this means more to older readers who are thinking about that subject themselves.

I liked that this was a substantial read.

I liked that though Adam is straight he is accepting towards his many gay family members.

I liked Adam’s politics (likely the same as those of John Irving).

I liked that Irving knew where he was going all along. He wraps up most of the loose ends.

And it’s by John Irving.

What I Liked Less

The book way seemed too long. It took me two months to finish (which is a really long time for me. I usually read faster than that.)

Part of my long reading time was because I was reading other books.

But in the middle sections of the book, my enthusiasm for reading it flagged somewhat. Reading it became a bit of a slog.

It was sprawling, meandering, and slow paced.
An audio would have helped a lot here, but none was available yet.

So this wasn’t as much of a favorite as the other Irving books I’ve read.

However, the last twenty percent really redeemed the book.

I Could Relate

Although I'm younger than John Irving, I'm old enough to recall much of the time frame and cultural references of the book. It starts in the 1950s and ends in the current time.

I went to Exeter summer school one summer, so I'm vaguely familiar with both Exeter Academy and the surrounding town.

Like Adam, I too, was an intermediate skier and never got better than that.

I may have skied once at Bromley Mountain, where Adam's mother worked. I remember skiing a trail called Yodeler.

I skied in Colorado once (but it was Copper Mountain, not Aspen).

I had a college boyfriend who was a high school wrestler. He told me about "cutting weight" and the rest of it.

I used to take frequent trips to Vermont, so I know at least part of that beautiful state.

Plus, I live in New York City (another locale in the book).

Overall Ratings

Pacing, length, etc.: 3
Meaningful subject matter: 4
Writing and voice: 4
Emotionally moving: 4
My enthusiasm during reading: 3

Overall: 3.5

Trigger and Other Warnings

There is an abundance of foul language, though in context it’s usually quite funny.
But if foul language really bothers you, avoid this book.

There are plenty of bawdy scenes. If this bothers you, avoid this.

I’m pretty certain Trump supporters won’t like this book.

Thanks to NetGalley

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing an ARC (Advance Review Copy) of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The book will be published on October 18, 2022.

#TheLastChairlift #NetGalley

Update I’m raising the rating to 4.

[Boris Feldman · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst thing that John Irving ever wrote.
I love John Irving. May he live to 120. I kept hoping that this novel would improve. I finally came to grips with the reality that it was a failure at 44%. This is not even a first draft. It is a series of Post-Its stapled together. The editor should be disbarred (de-redpencilled?). The reviewers try to say nice things, but in their hearts, they know that this is dreck. They should have to face a truth and amnesty panel.
Mr. Irving, you have brought me great joy with your prior brilliant works. But it’s time to hang up your wrestling tights, mate.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 1 out of 5]

This isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, but it may be the most disappointing.

A rambling mess from its very first page, John Irving’s The Last Chairlift goes on for almost 900 pages more, and by the last fifty I was just wishing for the book and myself to be put out of our combined misery. There are novels that leave you with a sense of sad longing when you get to that final page, and you wish the book could go on forever. This is not one of those books.

Mawkish and overwrought, The Last Chairlift cries out for an editor who would have exerted some kind of control over the author and had the fortitude to tell this latter-day luminary of American lit the word “no.” Because it’s clear from that very first page that little editorial or authorial restraint has been practiced here, a horrible irony in a novel which not only has one, but two characters who are working editors. Even funnier (or sadder or stranger) is the thought I had to myself when my ARC edition appeared on my doorstep, and I cracked open the box to find this monstrosity of a novel. “Looks like John Irving doesn’t have an editor anymore,” I thought to myself. And then I opened the book’s cover, and the first thing I found was a full-page letter to the reader from his editor.

That first day, in a rather snarky move, I grabbed my copy of Moby Dick and put it next to The Last Chairlift to snap a picture on my phone, sending it off to a couple of friends to show them how Irving’s new novel dwarfs that American classic, which some benighted readers complain is loose and rambling and too long. Irving seems to have made it a goal of his here to let those fussbudgets know they ain’t seen nothing yet, and if Henry James dared assert that many of the sprawling works of Nineteenth-Century novelists were “loose, baggy monsters,” well, I’m not sure what he’d have to say about The Last Chairlift because it’s looser and baggier than anything Irving’s literary hero Charles Dickens ever wrote. And it’s ultimately far less satisfying. Everything by Dickens, whose works were serialized over a period of many months, comes together far more smoothly than this mess of a book does, which dizzyingly veers from one locale to another and one time to another, while changing thematic horses midstream and introducing characters and plot points willy nilly without any real regard to what is generally called “good writing.” And ironically enough, what a surprise to find that Moby Dick itself plays a very important role in The Last Chairlift. Irving is a fan of Melville and pays tribute to Moby Dick throughout the book, albeit with no chapters on cetology. And yet, I’m pretty sure even Herman Melville would have given up on The Last Chairlift long before the half-way point.

Not me. I endured until the bitter end, but it was an easy book to put down. I first read a hundred pages or so and then happily left it for several months when I went off to Nepal. I wasn’t carrying that cement block of a novel with me while I was trekking, even if I took Avenue of Mysteries along with me last time out to the Himalayas. And then after returning home, I found myself putting it down quite regularly. A page, a paragraph, sometimes even a couple of sentences were enough to put me to sleep or disappoint me, sending me off in search of greener and more focused and interesting pastures.

And lest you think I am just a grumpy old bitch, let me pause here with my own Melvillian digression to assert my bona fides. Back in the salad days of GoodReads, back when it was a lot more interesting and people were a lot more engaged in the site, there were some extra, interesting features they have since cut out. One was identifying your favorite authors on your profile page, and those authors’ portraits would appear right there with a link. My top author was John Irving, and he’d still be there if GoodReads hadn’t kicked this feature to the curb. (Why GoodReads, you cheap bastards? And whence the trivia feature, too?)

So, maybe now you better understand that disappointment I referred to at the top of the review. But in true Dickensian digressiveness, let me elaborate some more. I feel like I’ve known who John Irving was my entire life. I grew up in Iowa City, the town he came to for his MFA, where he worked on his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, and then returned to a few years later to teach at the Writers Workshop. The first time I read anything by Irving was when the opening chapter of The World According to Garp appeared in Playboy. My mother, a woman nearly as eccentric as the mothers in Irving’s novels, got Garp in the mail through the Book-of-the-Month Club. I was a couple of chapters into it it before she sent it back for being too risque for her Midwestern Baptist tastes. But I was hooked. I got my own copy and finished it up and told everyone I knew it was the best book I ever read. I attended the premier of the movie The World According to Garp at Hancher Auditorium, and that was a big frickin deal. I saw John Irving speak to a crowded gathering in that little lecture hall in Philips, on the corner of Clinton and Iowa. I was sitting in the aisle and waiting for him to appear, when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see the author right behind me trying to make his way through us to the podium. (I even asked him a question at that talk about his inspiration for Setting Free the Bears. You see, in the late ‘60s in Iowa City at the entrance to City Park there was a bear pit, three cages side by side with a black bear, a grizzly bear, and a polar bear. It definitely was not quality zoo stuff, and so I asked Irving if he was in part inspired by those bear cages to write his first book. He claimed he was not and went on to talk about the zoo in Vienna, but I always felt he was bullshitting me a little there.) Later that night I went to hear him read from The Cider House Rules, Iike Homer Wells reading to the orphans. I still remember him echoing the words of Dr. Larch, “Goodnight–you Princes of Maine, you Kings of New England!” Or maybe I’m making that up. Who knows? But I did know, however, where Bogus Trumper’s house was on Iowa Ave. I spent hours and hours and hours in the Field House wrestling room, a place Irving still speaks of in reverent tones. And I was thrilled every time Iowa City would cameo in Irving’s novels, and more than ever when that Chinese restaurant popped up in Last Night in Twisted River, because Ming Garden is a place that lives on in the fading memories of my childhood.

For shit’s sakes, I even had a stuffed bear my girlfriend gave me before I went off to college that we named “Irving.” So don’t think it’s easy for me to give a one-star to this book.

But it deserves that measly star because it’s truly a mess, and it’s so disappointing because not only is it the first ARC I ever received, as well as the last long-form novel the author says he plans to write, underneath all the obtuse, disjointed mess is a great John Irving novel that he could have closed his career with if he had just practiced some restraint and done a lot of rewriting. And cut about three hundred pages. Sorry, I’m going on way too long here myself, but if you feel like I’m wasting your time, I’m just building the case for why this is absolutely the most disappointing book I have ever read.

That better novel underneath it all just begging to be set free from the bad writing and excess development tells a familiar story to a John Irving fan. Many, many of the elements we know and love are present:

✔️A novelist protagonist
✔️An intense focus on the writer’s craft
✔️An eccentric mother
✔️The absent father
✔️Preternaturally short person
✔️Small-town New England boarding school
✔️Weird sex
✔️Wrestling
✔️Cross dressers and transsexuals
✔️A trip to Europe
✔️More weird sex
✔️Small-town Iowa writing school
✔️Even more weird sex
✔️The shift to Canada
✔️Spasms of great violence and mutilation
✔️And death. Much, much, much death

Sadly, what’s missing from the list are bears. And in place of the bears, there are ghosts. And a lot of skiing. But why ghosts? I dunno, and I’m not sure Irving does either. Well, that’s not exactly true. I know what he’s going for here. There are characters like our narrator who see ghosts and characters who don’t. And these ghosts are Symbols, with a capital /S/, right, John? But boy are they poorly done and inconsistent and don’t need to be there in the first place. Maybe Irving is doing something with ghosts because Dickens is his biggest influence and he felt like he needed to get some ghosts into his work, but that’s just one small part of how the book is poorly conceived and executed. There’s also this terrible tendency to stuff the book full of ridiculous epithets: “the Night Groomer,” “the Little Snowshoer,” “the Infant Emeritus,” “the Zither Man.” It gets tiresome. And a bit ridiculous, after a while, as does his misuse and abuse of the word “noir,” which appears scores of times in the book, never, as far as I can tell, in an appropriate context.

So maybe I am being a grumpy old bitch here, and if you’re a John Irving fan like me you’ll probably read the novel anyway. But be prepared to be disappointed. Strangely, there are a lot of glowing reviews of the book here on GoodReads. I’m not sure what novel these people read, but it isn’t the same one I received in the mail. It’s taken nearly a year to free myself from the mess and I'm just glad its finally done. Scrolling through the four and five-star reviews of this shipwreck of a novel, it feels like I only am escaped alone to tell thee the sad truth. This is a very disappointing book.

[Christopher Febles · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s about this guy growing up and living in Exeter, New Hampshire in unusual circumstances. His mother, a one-time competitive downhill skier turned ski instructor, gave birth to him at a young age without revealing to him the father’s identity. That’s kinda what the jacket says, and when I read that first I said, “Uh, there’s no way he’s doing this in 889 pages.” But yeah, he did.

What happens next are the descriptions and loose interactions among some very interesting and quirky characters. I suppose the book is a treatise on sexual politics, and at its best it defends the rights of sexual minorities, or at times, celebrates them.

The issue for me is that the stories are bloody well circuitous. It takes a little story arc for about 150 pages, then just swirls around and around with no clear direction until something tragic happens. True to Irving’s style, the characters all have certain traits, mannerisms, and turns of phrase. But without structure, these become catchphrases. I heard the same things from the same characters so many times for hundreds of pages, for a moment I thought Gary Coleman was gonna pop out and say, “Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?” Time also becomes fluid here, with flashbacks and stories and tragedy intertwining so often I couldn’t tell who was alive or dead.

There are also two screenplays embedded here, neither of which I liked very much or understood very well. They seem to be autobiographical according to the narrator’s life. I’m not sure if Irving intended them to be staid and dreamy, but I glanced over them because they weren’t interesting to me.

I can say that I appreciated the characters’ experiences with fighting for their rights, especially through the AIDS epidemic. I learned a bit and developed some understanding of and appreciation for sexual politics.

But much too girthy, or too loose for me. I was reminded of Thomas Pynchon, or one of the more stream-of-consciousness tomes of Delillo, Don. Not my cup of tea, and not what I’d have expected. For me this was The World According to Garp without a plot.

That doesn’t put me off from Irving, however. Not in the least. The Cider House Rules, Garp, and A Prayer for Owen Meany are still up there among my favorites. I also think this guy’s so amazing he’s virtually impervious to criticism, especially from a hack like me. So, give it a go if you don’t mind getting lost a bit.

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I tried. I give up.

[Marcia reading past dark · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one begin to review the work of a man who is called one of the greatest novelists of our day? The Last Chairlift is John Irving’s first book in 7 years, and it is a tome, stretching 912 pages. In this new novel, the author is at his best. His is a unique humor that is subtle, often hidden between the lines, and his characters are eccentric creatures, making them even more memorable.
The Last Chairlift opens with Adam, a first-person narrator, who writes in a diary style. We are introduced to his family, each one dysfunctional in his or her own way. I loved the grandmother, who reads Moby Dick aloud to him and sparks his love of literature. If you’re like me, you’ll be tempted to read Melville’s great American classic again.
This novel could almost be characterized as historical fiction, for it includes content related to politics, war, the AIDS epidemic, and society’s ever-changing sexual mores. Irving has strong opinions and is open in sharing his views.
Destined to be one of those books that people either love or hate, The Last Chairlift will most certainly be discussed and debated by casual readers and literary scholars alike. But I have no doubt that fans of John Irving will race to purchase this new work.
This timeless author turned 80 this year, but his indomitable voice is as strong as ever. In the literary world, John Irving is ageless.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster, NetGalley, and the amazing John Irving for the advanced copy of this novel.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Irving has been one of my favorite authors for a long time. I remember reading The World According to Garp when I was in my 20s and knowing I'd found an author I would follow. And for many years I did. He slipped off my radar for some reason a few years ago so I was excited to see this, his first book in seven years.

This is the life of Adam Brewster. It begins in early childhood with his skiing obsessed and mostly missing mother in New Hampshire and carries into late in his life living in Toronto. All along the way Adam is surrounded by interesting and somewhat quirky characters and although there are six main characters who are prominent, there are a number who sneak in and influence him in some way.

For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed riding along with Adam and his cast of characters on his life's journey. I do feel, however, that similarly to a few other established authors, editing was an afterthought. The story grabbed me from the beginning but it did drag a bit in places and at over 900 pages, I'm not surprised. If you're also an Irving fan, I think you'll enjoy this book. It has all the hallmarks of a good Irving novel: brilliant writing, unusual characters and a story line that captivates.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy of this book for review. The publication date is October 18, 2022.