At the age of 80, John Irving feels anything but an author in their twilight years. On Zoom, recovering from a bout of Covid that slightly delayed WM’s interview with him, the acclaimed author, screenwriter and former wrestler is slightly husky in tone but eloquent, affable, and in full flow and eager to talk about his latest novel, and his first for seven years – The Last Chairlift.
Weighing in at almost 900 pages, The Last Chairlift is a proper hefty doorstop of a novel – and one which will delight fans of the American-Canadian novelist’s tragicomic work, which includes 20th-century classics The World According to Garp (1978), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) and The Cider House Rules (1985).
The Last– his 15th novel – shares many of Irving’s familiar themes. ‘As you know from many of my other novels there is a family premise that often repeats itself – amissing mother, an absent father, a town or school that changes someone,’ he says. Another of Irving’s repeated themes is alternative families, and in with its queer and trans characters, this is a central motif; lead character Adam’s mother Little Ray is gay and marries a man who transitions. ‘From its conceptions, I wanted to open up this family and make my first-person narrator the only straight person in it. I wanted his extended family to be protective of him, kind to him, and all queer, so that he is the odd one. I hoped that the reader would come with me and see him as the odd one too.’
