Publishers Weekly
08/22/2022
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. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Irving's old magic emerges: his wit and fearlessness around sex, and his grasp of the wide ripple effects of intolerance. "There's more than one way to love people, Kid," young Adam is told early on. If Irving keeps hammering that point, over and over again, it's because he's collected years of evidence that some people never hear it.” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Irving is at home in the supernatural; he traverses the membrane between this world and the next with comfort and ease. A ghost story needn’t be a horror story. It can also be a romantic comedy that includes some characters more scared by living ghouls than ectoplasm. “The Last Chairlift” is eminently readable, stocked with characters and relationships easy to invest in, even when things get a little queasy making. Irving has been cranking out novels for 54 years, establishing a consistent generosity of spirit that continues through his most recent book."—Boston Globe
"Powerfully cinematic...Irving’s portrayal of a shooting in a crowded venue, for instance, is rendered with such visual acuity and kinetic energy that I’d swear I saw it rather than read it....Whenever “The Last Chairlift” is actively expanding the boundaries of what a family can be — the story feels vital and exciting."—WASHINGTON POST
"Here the consistent pleasure is an extended family whose distinctive voices deliver thoughtful messages of tolerance, understanding, and affection for those who are different."—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Irving’s majestic latest, his first since Avenue of Mysteries (2015), is a multigenerational portrait as colorful and varied as it is complex and quirky as it echoes and pays homage to the author’s own rich literary history. ... Irving infuses the narrative with countless comedic set pieces, some farcical, others wistfully tender. The emotionally resonant result is sweepingly cinematic, reminding the reader that Irving has a screenwriting Oscar. Autobiographical snippets and splashes of brilliance buttress the themes of death and aging, memory and identity, in an elegiac testimony to the many facets of familial love...a big, immersive novel."—Booklist
"His enormous imagination, his storytelling gifts, and his intelligence are all on display."—Publishers Weekly
"Irving fills the pages with history, insight, opinion, and themes of family love and tolerance.... fans of the author's trademark homespun prose and delicate way with words will find much to savor here."—BAY AREA REPORTER
“It’s long. But don’t let that dissuade you. Let it excite you that there’s that much new John Irving material to read. I mean, John Irving! "The World According to Garp!" "A Prayer for Owen Meany!" "The Cider House Rules!" "A Widow For One Year!" His first novel in seven years takes place in Aspen, Colorado, in 1941. It follows Little Ray, a former national skier, who moves back east to have her son. Years later, her grown son returns to the Hotel Jerome in Aspen where he encounters some ghosts. Read on. You won’t be able to stop."—Good Morning America
"A story that’s packed with emotion, insight and compassion for our flawed humanity....With Irving celebrating his 80th birthday earlier this year, his publisher has announced that The Last Chairlift will be his last big novel. For all the enjoyment more modest works may bring, this one is a fitting valediction to his distinguished literary career."—Book Page
Praise for John Irving
“It is impossible to imagine the American – or international – literary landscape without John Irving.... He is as close as one gets to a contemporary Dickens in the scope of his celebrity and the level of his achievement.”—Time
“At the base of Irving’s own moral concerns is a rare and lasting regard for human kindness.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Wickedly knowing, mischievously post-modern and magical realist along the lines of Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez and Robertson Davies.”—Time Out, London
“When reading an Irving novel, the outside world becomes just a distraction, and real life happens inside the reader’s head.”—Der Spiegel, Hamburg
“He is more than popular. He is a Populist, determined to keep alive the Dickensian tradition that revels in colorful set pieces...and teaches moral lessons.”—The New York Times
“Irving offers...a faith in patient storytelling and the conviction that narrative hunger is part of our essence.”—The Globe and Mail, Toronto
“Because of his relentless determination...John Irving has become the incarnation of the ‘great American novelist’ par excellence with his fabulous gift as a storyteller and ability to give food for thought.”—L’Express, Paris
“Irving’s sometimes burlesque but always moving novels are a plea for mercy and tolerance.”—De Groene Amsterdammer, Amsterdam
“Irving’s novels are not just page-turners. Time and time again, he forces readers to consider important social issues...in a way reminiscent of Dickens.”—The Guardian, London
“Irving’s characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive.”—The Washington Post Book World
“More than forty years [after Garp], thanks to his devastating irony, quiet provocation, comical obsessions, priapic debauchery, sex and neuroses on all levels, John Irving remains unrivaled.”—Le Monde, Paris
“Irving's old magic emerges: his wit and fearlessness around sex, and his grasp of the wide ripple effects of intolerance. "There's more than one way to love people, Kid," young Adam is told early on. If Irving keeps hammering that point, over and over again, it's because he's collected years of evidence that some people never hear it.” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Irving is at home in the supernatural; he traverses the membrane between this world and the next with comfort and ease. A ghost story needn’t be a horror story. It can also be a romantic comedy that includes some characters more scared by living ghouls than ectoplasm. “The Last Chairlift” is eminently readable, stocked with characters and relationships easy to invest in, even when things get a little queasy making. Irving has been cranking out novels for 54 years, establishing a consistent generosity of spirit that continues through his most recent book."—Boston Globe
"Powerfully cinematic...Irving’s portrayal of a shooting in a crowded venue, for instance, is rendered with such visual acuity and kinetic energy that I’d swear I saw it rather than read it....Whenever “The Last Chairlift” is actively expanding the boundaries of what a family can be — the story feels vital and exciting."—WASHINGTON POST
"Here the consistent pleasure is an extended family whose distinctive voices deliver thoughtful messages of tolerance, understanding, and affection for those who are different."—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Irving’s majestic latest, his first since Avenue of Mysteries (2015), is a multigenerational portrait as colorful and varied as it is complex and quirky as it echoes and pays homage to the author’s own rich literary history. ... Irving infuses the narrative with countless comedic set pieces, some farcical, others wistfully tender. The emotionally resonant result is sweepingly cinematic, reminding the reader that Irving has a screenwriting Oscar. Autobiographical snippets and splashes of brilliance buttress the themes of death and aging, memory and identity, in an elegiac testimony to the many facets of familial love...a big, immersive novel."—Booklist
"His enormous imagination, his storytelling gifts, and his intelligence are all on display."—Publishers Weekly
"Irving fills the pages with history, insight, opinion, and themes of family love and tolerance.... fans of the author's trademark homespun prose and delicate way with words will find much to savor here."—BAY AREA REPORTER
“It’s long. But don’t let that dissuade you. Let it excite you that there’s that much new John Irving material to read. I mean, John Irving! "The World According to Garp!" "A Prayer for Owen Meany!" "The Cider House Rules!" "A Widow For One Year!" His first novel in seven years takes place in Aspen, Colorado, in 1941. It follows Little Ray, a former national skier, who moves back east to have her son. Years later, her grown son returns to the Hotel Jerome in Aspen where he encounters some ghosts. Read on. You won’t be able to stop."—Good Morning America
"A story that’s packed with emotion, insight and compassion for our flawed humanity....With Irving celebrating his 80th birthday earlier this year, his publisher has announced that The Last Chairlift will be his last big novel. For all the enjoyment more modest works may bring, this one is a fitting valediction to his distinguished literary career."—Book Page
Library Journal
09/01/2022
Irving returns with his first novel since 2015's Avenue of Mysteries, calling it his "last long novel." Another semi-autobiographical work, it features Adam Brewster, a wrestler who becomes a novelist/screenwriter growing up in 1950s Exeter, NH. His mother, Rachel (Little Ray) is a ski instructor in Vermont who leaves Adam with his grandmother and aunts in Exeter during ski season. Adam is raised in a sexually and gender-fluid home, unusual for that time. He and other family members see ghosts in their home and elsewhere. In adulthood, Adam searches his young mother's haunts in Aspen to hunt down his biological father. Sections of this novel are in screenplay form, which can feel cumbersome. However, audiences who like to delve into an Irving-esque world will feel quirkily at home. Some sentences, paragraphs, and images are so beautifully poignant that readers will need to pause to breathe and let them soak in. VERDICT Irving is a staunch supporter and frank discusser of sexual minorities, sexual politics, and alternative families; here he handles them with grace and gusto. This time, he layers in skiing lore and ghosts among those core topics, creating a hefty heart-wrenching ghost story and family love story of the sort that only Irving can craft.—Beth Liebman Gibbs
OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Jacques Roy does the heavy lifting in this update from the chronicler of American sexual politics and champion of nontraditional families. Harkening back to his first hit, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, this novel plays the same chorus with new verses. The ensemble voices in this behemoth of an audiobook take part in the imagined screenplays that are part of the novel. Roy’s pleasing and cordial voice navigates the story of Rachel Brewster, Little Ray, and her son, Adam, as ghosts of former relatives haunt their unconventional family. Roy portrays gender twists and sexual violence with a steady hand. Fans will relish this report on society since 1950, but this audiobook isn’t where you want to start your love affair with Irving. R.O. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-07-27
Familiar Irving themes and autobiographical points mark this sprawling family tale.
Narrator Adam Brewster is a lucky bastard. His short and unwed mother, Ray, is gay but marries even shorter Elliot, an English teacher and wrestler at Adam’s New Hampshire school, who's fine with Ray living part of the year elsewhere with her female partner, Molly, and will eventually transition genders. At the wedding, Adam hears the epic orgasms experienced by Em, the partner of his cousin Nora. They perform, in some of the novel’s best moments, at a comedy club as Two Dykes, One Who Talks, with Nora interpreting Em’s pantomime. Adam, seen from childhood to old age, is lucky to be raised and surrounded by women who are smart, loving, and supportive. Still, he spends most of the book trying to find out more about his father, someone Ray met in 1941 when she was a teenager at a hotel in Aspen, Colorado. The likely candidate is an actor whose noir films and off-screen life become a major sidebar. The lost paternity that haunts Adam is reflected in actual ghosts that appear haphazardly throughout the novel, sparking a few comic moments but mainly serving to personify his preoccupation with family history. Like Irving, Adam writes three novels before gaining broad fame with his fourth. Also like Irving, he writes for the movies, and twice the narrative switches to lengthy stretches of screenplay format, bringing a welcome briskness to the generally slow pace. Irving’s writing can be painfully plain, short on imagery or elegance and long, oh so long, on repetition. But his imagination and empathy often work to charm a reader when the prose falls short. Here the consistent pleasure is an extended family whose distinctive voices deliver thoughtful messages of tolerance, understanding, and affection for those who are different.
A book that will try a reader’s patience but may also reward it.
