The Last Chairlift
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3.7 • 154 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
John Irving’s fifteenth novel is “powerfully cinematic” (The Washington Post) and “eminently readable” (The Boston Globe). The Last Chairlift is part ghost story, part love story, spanning eight decades 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, he 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 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 “generously intertextual” (The New York Times) The Last Chairlift, readers will once more be in his thrall.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This overblown and underplotted behemoth of a novel from Irving (The World According to Garp) follows the idiosyncratic journey to adulthood of Adam, an illegitimate child born and raised in New England who becomes a writer. The search for Adam's father's identity provides a thriller element, but it never generates much narrative momentum. Dickensian in scope, the book includes multiple story lines, notably the complex love life of Adam's lesbian mother, Little Ray, a ski instructor who marries a man who will identify as a woman. Nora, an outspoken lesbian cousin who's a victim of sexual violence, also plays a significant role. Along the way, Irving chronicles American society from the 1950s to roughly the present, focused on feminism and sexual intolerance. His enormous imagination, his storytelling gifts, and his intelligence are all on display, but this feels more like a coda to his career, if one with a still-resonant theme about family and the maternal relationship: "We're alone in the way we love our mothers, or in the way we don't." Irving's fans may love this, but it's not the place to start for anyone new to his work. Agents: Dean Cooke, Cooke McDermid, and Janet Turnbull, Turnbull Agency.
Customer Reviews
Thank you for one last novel.
There was a little bit of everything a fan would appreciate. The themes of acceptance, love, and nurturing come through along with ghosts. Not sure if the shotgun scene in Aspen was an homage to Dr. Thompson who lost his voice at the end in Woody Creek, but his heartfelt tribute to Mr. Vonnegut was appreciated along with the use of a spot lit semicolon. The great reveal of Rabi Karabekian is tough to beat as a swan song.
The only regret is that The Water Method Man was never made into a film. Where the Buffalo Roam and The World According to Garp came out in theaters at the same time and Bill Murray would have carried Fred ‘Bogus’ Trumper nicely. Thank you from a very appreciative reader.
Pass
Usually thoroughly enjoy the author’s work but found this one a real struggle. Prayer for Owen and Last Night are favorites. Couldn’t even finish this one.
Just couldn’t do it.
Having read and fought through Irving’s teenager fascination with all kinds of sexuality to get to the point if his books, I just couldn’t do it anymore with this one. In Chairlift, Irving heaps his characters’ completely ridiculous sexual prerogatives on his reader the way A Little Life overdoses on the number of abusive situations that can happen to one single person in a lifetime. I’m beginning to wonder if Irving has ever written a book wherein even one of his characters has a normal libido and sex life. With books like this train wreck and The Hotel New Hampshire, he seems to only be interested in writing characters who exist only for their sexual fetishes. His female protagonist (?) in this story isn’t even likeable. Don’t waste your time.