David Schwinghammer’s Reviews > The Last Chairlift > Status Update

Adam is now living in Manchester, Vermont. He still hasn't met Grace, but he talks about her as if he has.

Will Adam move to Vermont and marry Grace? His friends have him lined up to do so, perhaps making up his mind for him.

Em participates in protests against the Catholic church; she'd gone to a Catholic school as a young girl. Condemnation against using condoms to stop the spread of AIDS was an issue for her.

Adam has a thing for his friend Em. Mr. Barlow, his old teacher, accuses him of fictionalizing their relationship.: "You're imagining that you and Em are a couple, that you're already together--this is how you look at her," he said.

Most likely Em has just lost her true love, Nora.

Nora is shot at the Gallows, where she sometimes performs. The shooter kills himself.

An avalanche kills the Little Barlows. The snowshoer had seen "a kind of crazy rapture, or at least relief on their frozen faces. She's seen (or had imagined) "the intense joy or at least relief" parents feel when they know their children will outlive them.

Irving addresses the AIDS epidemic through one of his minor characters.

Bob hope jokes about AIDS at the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. It was particularly risqué.

There's a fellow writer in line after Adam's reading. Her name is Wilson. He imagines having sex with her.

Adam's friends, Nora and Em, do routines at a performance venue called the Gallows. It was getting harder to be funny about anything already at the end of the 1970's. And they called themselves Two Dykes, One Who Talks.