Unfortunately I couldn’t get through this one. Too all over the place for me and didn’t feel like the payoff would be worth it in the end. Disappointing!

I have read everything John Irving has published. I appreciate his signature scattershot story telling. The Last Chairlift, however, is too scrambled and too long. I had to force myself to finish the book (see first sentence, lol). Anyway, this book could use a really strident editor.

John Irving is a major American writer and I have enjoyed several of his novels, but this is not one of my favorites. The work is too long and repetitious. Adam Brewster, the illegitimate son of ski instructor Rachel Brewster, narrates the story of his life from the 1940s to the present day. He is raised in a non-traditional family without knowing who his father is. He travels to the Hotel Jerome in Aspen to try to solve the mystery and encounters several ghosts. There is humor scattered throughout with plenty of quirky characters. The author deals with sexual politics and tolerance, among other issues. There were intriguing passages among the boring ones and I did finish the book.

This book took me a long time but it was a very worthwhile read! I watched a livestream with Irving and he recommended taking this page by page “because I did” he said!

I DNFd at 26% which isn’t a REALLY long way in with most novels but in a John Irving, but especially this one it was an eternity. Owen Meany and Coder House are two of my favorite books ever but this was not those.

As usual, John Irving is the master of his craft. I made a home in the long descriptions and the characters as I watched the plot unwind in front of my eyes. If this is one of his last books, then it is a triumph and should be cherished.

I really enjoyed this book so much! I totally forgot to review it last fall though. John Irving is one of my favorite writers EVER. I can't believe he came out with a book after so many years but I am SUPER happy about it. I thought this book was fabulous even though it took me awhile to get through it at 800+ pages. There are many details of this book that are a reminder to his novels in the past intertwined in this new tale of the life of Adam Brewster, the main character and narrator, humorous but serious in the epic story that spans 80 years of Adam's life. I highly recommend this amazing novel to and John Irving fans out there!!! I was thrilled to get an ARC, and I absolutely loved the vast, yet touching story of all the different kind of love Adam experiences throughout his life.

I really couldn’t get into this novel. Obviously, Irving is a wonderful writer but I just could not relate to the characters or the situation. It just didn’t flow very well and I just wasn’t into it.

I finally finished this one! My slow pace had nothing to do with how much I liked the book, but more because I wanted to be sure that I was reading every word and absorbing every aspect of the story and the characters, as I think all John Irving novels should be read. While not my favorite of his, it's definitely one of them! I loved this one, and hope that potential readers don't let the hefty weight of the book itself discourage you from starting it.

Probably the quirkiest of John Irving's work, this book revolves around Adam, raised by his ski-instructor mother and Nana, though the family expands to include step-relatives as the story evolves.

Funny, poignant, candid, and supremely REAL, this novel handles difficult subjects (sexual identity, puberty, aging, dementia, loss) with care and grace.

This was not my first Irving novel, but it was the first I read close to its publication date., which was a special treat. Highly recommend.

Goes well with tea and toast with marmalade.

I never really read Irving when everyone else was reading his novels in the 80s and 90s. Well, if his new book is anything to go by, I was definitely missing out. I found myself completely immersed in this incredible book. It is a very long book but did not feel that way at all. I found the characters some of the most fascinating I have encountered in recent fiction. This is an incredible novel that has lead me to making up for my failure to embrace Irving in my youth and has me going back to read alot of his earlier work. Highly recommended.

DNFed this one. This book rehashed many of Irving's earlier books and their themes. It also was very long and in need of better editing.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

The Last Chairlift is a long-lens family saga by John Irving. Released 18th Oct 2022 by Simon & Schuster, it's 912 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback format due out from the same publisher in 4th quarter 2023. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

The author is possibly (probably?) the most well known and one of the most well respected authors alive, with a career spanning almost 6 decades. He's an Oscar winning wordsmith and has had a long and illustrious career, winning every possible accolade from his peers. Whilst this is not his best work, it's an amazing, flawed, complex beast.

The plot defies description. The only possible comment is that the book blurb does *not* give a clear overview over the content of the book. Technically, it's unquestionably brilliant, containing everything including the kitchen sink, wrestling, a matryoshka setup with multiple layers of characters and even different formats piggybacking off one another. There's a lot of commentary on sexual politics, power dynamics, society, humans in general, and -unquestionably- very much more which sailed right over my head.

There will definitely be doctoral dissertations aplenty written about the symbolism in this meaty book. For fans of the author and for readers who are quite adept and erudite with literature analysis, this will be a 5(+) star read. I found it complex and difficult to maintain an interest. It's an ultra-marathon, and throughout much of the read, I felt like a 5k runner poseur.

Four stars (because I couldn't stand to give John Irving a 3.5 star rating).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I wanted to love this book and I just couldn’t. It was way too long and the characters were just not relatable or likeable. The writing was of course beautiful but there was so little plot and it was just entirely too long.

I usually love Irving. It took me forever to get into this one. I’m glad I stuck with it. Thanks for the review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

There is a story in the book in which the main character's grandmother reads him Moby Dick and it takes them three years to finish it. After trying valiantly off and on for over 2 months, I came to the conclusion that this book was going to take me that long to finish, so I quit.

I have really always enjoyed John Irving's work, and am very disappointed in myself for not sticking to this one. But there are so many off-putting things in it that it finally got the best of me.

I have a hard time believing that every female who is related to Adam is a lesbian, but that is what the author seems to be saying. And on top of that, Adam himself seems unable to find or make a connection with any woman who is not deeply flawed in some way.

I feel that to love this novel you must be a long time fan of John Irving. Having read several of his novels, I considered myself one, but I'm sad to see that this is his last long novel because it's definitely not his best work. It's too long and goes on long tangents, it's almost as if he just wants to have several good long rants so he put them in a book and threw some characters around them to try to keep readers engaged. I plugged a long until the end, but was not impressed.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Adam Brewster, our protagonist, was born of his mother Rae's unplanned pregnancy. Rae was an elite-level skier, and children were nowhere on her radar. While she gave up on her Olympic dream, she lived away from the family home for much of the year, working as a ski instructor. Adam was raised primarily by family members, but he always idolized his mother.

The book later dives into sexuality of every variety, blurring the lines between genders and exploring the lives of transgender individuals and queer relationships. He even gets into the horror show that was the Reagan administration. Standing idly by while AIDS burned through the gay community is only one of the sins of our second-worst president.

The Last Chairlift was not my favorite John Irving novel (that was In One Person), but Irving writes the misfit and the misunderstood like no one else. It's a very long book, but it's very enjoyable as long as you're willing to take your time instead of powering through on a mission. As always, Irving's characters are distinct and well-described – you will never confuse characters in one of his novels.

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of The Last Chairlift from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have to be honest, I did not make it through this. I was so excited to get my hands on a new John Irving book but....this was just not the ticket. The book felt like he did not have an editor and it felt like there were a lot of self-indulgent tangents he went on that were in no real particular way related to the story itself. Oh well. Irving has hit it out of the park before, so maybe we will just have to stick with Owen Meany.