The Last Chairlift, John's Irving's latest novel, is not for the faint of heart. It is a novel of love, family, and the twentieth century. The first-person narrator, Adam Brewster, is a writer, but the story of the novel is not really his story. Instead, he tells the stories of the people of his world
— his mother, his stepfather, his mother's partner, his cousin Nora and her partner Em, his son, his biological father, his grandparents, his awful aunts and fabulous uncles, his friend Zim, and, of course, the ghosts of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen.
Before I read the book, I was interested in it because I've liked the couple of John Irving novels I've read, but it was mostly the setting that sold me on reading it. Be forewarned, Aspen is only a setting for a relatively small part of the 889 pages, although several crucial scenes do occur there. If you're reading it just for the Aspen setting, you will be disappointed. Most of the novel takes place in New England and New York. The Brewster family is firmly entrenched in Exeter, New Hampshire, with Adam's grandfather, uncles, and stepfather all teachers at the Phillips Exeter Academy. From there, the characters migrate to Vermont, NYC, and eventually Toronto. Setting is important in the novel, as are skiing, snowshoeing, and wrestling.
What else is important? Size matters. Gender doesn't. Genetics maybe matters--Adam wonders where he got his "writer gene" from. In the end, nurture wins out over nature. Love matters. Most of all, storytelling matters.
Adam is the chronicler of his family, and he tells the stories of the people he loves. When it comes to telling his own story, he tells it in the form of a screenplay, detaching himself from the confessional stance that a first-person narrative would require. He provides his thoughts as voice-overs, adds a soundtrack, describes various camera angles of critical scenes, and describes his own facial expressions in the detailed script. Ghosts are important characters in the novel, and I think this screenplay technique for telling his own story makes Adam a bit like a ghost character himself (not literally but in the way he detaches his story from his job as narrator). Not everyone believes in ghosts in the novel, and those who do don't necessarily believe in ghosts in the same way, just as not everyone gets the same thing out of a work of literature. The framework of the story is there, but how you respond to it is individual. Similarly, one of the characters, Em, doesn't speak for most of the novel but pantomimes what she would otherwise say — Em has developed a sophisticated way to express herself. Her pantomimes are like the ghost characters — not everyone sees, experiences, or understands them in the same way. Not everyone hears, experiences, or understands what is said in the same way. Understanding each other is slippery and takes work and work requires love.
That said, there are certain things that Irving uses Adam and his stories to make 100% crystal clear to the reader:
- Gender and sexual orientation can be fluid, and accepting people as they are is the only way real love can happen.
- Lies of omission count as lies.
- The Catholic Church and Ronald Reagan are complicit in the deaths of countless people who died because of their response and/or lack of response to AIDS.
- Moby Dick is a great novel and should be read aloud and memorized.
- Choice matters.
Don't bother reading this book if you are going to be offended by swearing, lots of sex, and Republican bashing and some Democratic bashing as well.
Irving repeats himself a lot in this book, but in the end, I think the repetition serves to enhance the cadence of the novel. I really tried to find a word-frequency diagram of the novel but couldn't. I even thought about doing one myself, but who has the time?
Random stuff I loved in the novel.
- The two Norwegian uncles who laugh all the time, get a zither player for Adam's mom's wedding (and he only plays the theme from The Third Man and some Elvis), and served in Camp Hale during WWII, training skiers in the 10th Mountain Division. I love these guys!
- All the various labels Irving/Adam uses to refer to his main characters
- Visiting Aspen, NYC, and Toronto with detailed descriptions of locations
- The love story between Little Ray and Elliot Barlow
- Damaged Don's songs and the standup routines at the Gallows
- Paul Goode's movies — we only ever know Paul through the screenplays of his movies, including the one Adam writes of his encounters with Paul in Aspen
- The ghost of Jerome B. Wheeler
- The way Irving wove so many books into the story — Moby Dick, Madeline, My Father's Dragon, and Jane Eyre are the ones that spring to mind, but I know there are others.
This is not a book everyone will love. I did. I gave it five stars on GoodReads, and I think it will have staying power. Writing a book like this takes courage and stamina and skill and heart.
Now I'm going to reread Moby Dick. Really!
