14 Top historical fiction books like The Last Chairlift by John Irving

Cover of The Last Chairlift by John Irving

The Last Chairlift

By: John Irving

3.44

Format: 889 pages, Hardcover

John Irving, one of the world’s greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years—a g…

If you liked the historical fiction plot in The Last Chairlift by John Irving , here is a list of 14 books like this:

Cover of Trust by Hernan Diaz

1. Trust

By: Hernan Diaz

3.83

Format: 402 pages, Hardcover

10 hours, 21 minutes From an award-winning chronicler of our nation's history and its legends co… read more

Similar categories in Hernan Diaz's Trust book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
"Where there's a ventriloquist, there's a dummy."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Chaos is a vortex that spins faster with each thing it swallows."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Silence between 2 is always shared. But 1 of the 2 owns it and shares it with the other."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

"Sleeplessness kept claiming her nights, and she used books as shields against the onslaught of her abstract terrors."

-Hernan Diaz, Trust

Cover of The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy

2. The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

By: Cormac McCarthy

3.58

Format: 385 pages, Kindle Edition

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of… read more

Similar categories in Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1) book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
"All of history [is] a rehearsal for its own extinction."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"...do you think if you died drunk you’d sober up before you met Jesus?"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"The evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"She asked the girl what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said dead."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

Cover of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

3. Tom Lake

By: Ann Patchett

3.99

Format: 309 pages, Hardcover

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again prov… read more

Similar categories in Ann Patchett's Tom Lake book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"You can’t pretend this [Covid] isn’t happening,"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"In the summer the pear trees were fine. In the summer, all that is hideous about a pear tree is hidden by leaves and pears. But once those disguises were removed they were nothing but acres of murder…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"Hazel, listen to me. I'm going to tell you something important, you need to be brave.' I then explained to the dog how I have told myself for so many years that my career fell apart because I wasn't …"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

"It's as if someone bought all the diamonds at Tiffany's, and crushed them into dust, then spread that dust across the water so that it sifts down evenly, filtering through the shards of light that cu…"

-Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Cover of The Covenant of Water by Abraham   Verghese

4. The Covenant of Water

By: Abraham Verghese

4.45

Format: 724 pages, Hardcover

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial ep… read more

Similar categories in Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • family
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo

5. Somebody's Fool

By: Richard Russo

4.27

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and t… read more

Similar categories in Richard Russo's Somebody's Fool book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • family
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

6. A Dangerous Business

By: Jane Smiley

3.17

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: a mystery set … read more

Similar categories in Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
Cover of James by Percival Everett

7. James

By: Percival Everett

4.54

Format: 303 pages, Hardcover

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , both harrowing and f… read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

8. Lucy by the Sea

By: Elizabeth Strout

3.91

Format: 291 pages, Hardcover

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bund… read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth Strout's Lucy by the Sea book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Lessons by Ian McEwan

9. Lessons

By: Ian McEwan

4.00

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, … read more

Similar categories in Ian McEwan's Lessons book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • family
  • audiobook
"Books are difficult to tidy. Hard to chuck out. They resist."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"Only the backward look, the well-researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"What must it be, to burst out of deep infant sleep into the shocking singular fact of existence."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

"The years slid over old deaths like a heavy lid. Nearly everything that happens to you in life you forget. Should have kept a journal."

-Ian McEwan, Lessons

Cover of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James   McBride

10. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

By: James McBride

4.00

Format: 385 pages, Hardcover

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing de… read more

Similar categories in James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
Cover of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

11. Birnam Wood

By: Eleanor Catton

3.82

Format: 432 pages, Hardcover

Birnam Wood is on the move . . . Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening gro… read more

Similar categories in Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • mystery
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"...wondering, not for the first time, when exactly she had become so technologically dependent that her first instinct in every unpredicted circumstance was to outsource her imagination to her phone."

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was just going to remark that being a cliche can be very useful. You ought to consider it some time.’ ’Oh yeah?’ ’Yeah,’ he said. ‘It means people underestimate you. They thi…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"As his rhetoric and reading life matured, he grew intensely scornful of what passed at his high school for 'education' - the mania for testing; the intolerance of real dissent; and the conformist cel…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

"... his future, had either been sold or laid to waste by his parents' generation, trapping him in a perpetual adolescence that was further heightened by the infantilising unreality of the Internet as…"

-Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

Cover of Day by Michael Cunningham

12. Day

By: Michael Cunningham

3.57

Format: 273 pages, Hardcover

As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, fallin… read more

Similar categories in Michael Cunningham's Day book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"Here, then, is the answer. A degree of cruelty is necessary because Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet, can only declare his love—that romantic hallucination, which would be…"

-Michael Cunningham, Day

Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

13. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • family
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of Table for Two by Amor Towles

14. Table for Two

By: Amor Towles

4.26

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a… read more

Similar categories in Amor Towles's Table for Two book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"And though she couldn’t remember the exact reference and whether it was from mythology or the Bible, she knew instinctively as they approached the pier’s limit she mustn’t look back."

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

"It is a funny aspect of life, thought Charlie, how a group of grown people can convince themselves to do something that none of them really want to do. They start by talking an idea into existence. O…"

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

Cover of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

15. Demon Copperhead

By: Barbara Kingsolver

4.50

Format: 560 pages, Hardcover

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in t… read more

Similar categories in Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • coming of age
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"Counting on Jesus to save the day is no more real than sending up the Batman signal."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

"life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don’t rule it out."

-Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Cover of Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2) by Colson Whitehead

16. Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

By: Colson Whitehead

3.88

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy … read more

Similar categories in Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2) book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
"Misery is a money pit."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"Step away entirely or you haven't stepped away at all."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"White cops did as they pleased. Crooked white cops? Untouchable."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"Simpler than conspiracy was Carney's take: In general, people were terrible."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

Cover of Fayne: A Novel by Ann-Marie MacDonald

17. Fayne: A Novel

By: Ann-Marie MacDonald

4.26

Format: 736 pages, Hardcover

A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magyk, love and identity. In the late nineteent… read more

Similar categories in Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fayne: A Novel book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • coming of age
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
"Byrn speaks and I understand him without effort, his words as clear as spring water. / Ask a favour of the plover, he says. Borrow her eyes. / Then I am flying through the air, and the flying is his …"

-Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fayne: A Novel

Cover of Hiekkalinnat: Erittelyjä rakkausromaania varten by Jukka Viikilä

18. Hiekkalinnat: Erittelyjä rakkausromaania varten

By: Jukka Viikilä

3.33

Format: 171 pages, Hardcover

Kaksinkertaisen Finlandia-voittajan romaani on häikäisevä tutkielma rakkaudesta, seksistä ja uskoll… read more

Similar categories in Jukka Viikilä's Hiekkalinnat: Erittelyjä rakkausromaania varten book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • fiction
Cover of The Last Chairlift by John Irving

19. The Last Chairlift

By: John Irving

3.44

Format: 889 pages, Hardcover

John Irving, one of the world’s greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years—a g… read more

Similar categories in John Irving's The Last Chairlift book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • unfinished
  • literature
  • historical
  • coming of age
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • family
  • audiobook
Cover of Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

20. Our Missing Hearts

By: Celeste Ng

3.80

Format: 335 pages, Hardcover

A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. Twelve-year-old Bird Gard… read more

Similar categories in Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • mystery
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"Succulents would grow anew from a broken-off leaf, pushing roots out into the air, then down into the soil: a piece of its own body, transformed into its child."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Evidence of his mother, out there, elsewhere, so worried about somebody else's children though she'd left her own behind. The irony of it leached into his veins."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

"And we need their generosity to keep this place open. Or, just as likely, someone got nervous and got rid of it preemptively. Us public libraries--a lot of us just can't take the risk."

-Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

Cover of Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

21. Small Mercies

By: Dennis Lehane

4.29

Format: 303 pages, Hardcover

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River —a… read more

Similar categories in Dennis Lehane's Small Mercies book and John Irving's The Last Chairlift

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook

21 Top fiction books like The Last Chairlift by John Irving

Transform Your Habits

Trust

Hernan Diaz

3.83

Transform Your Habits

The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

Cormac McCarthy

3.58

Transform Your Habits

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

3.99

Transform Your Habits

The Covenant of Water

Abraham Verghese

4.45

View all the books

21 must-read fiction books like Day by Michael Cunningham

Transform Your Habits

After Annie

Anna Quindlen

4.03

Transform Your Habits

The Wren, the Wren

Anne Enright

3.55

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

Transform Your Habits

Leaving

Roxana Robinson

3.87

View all the books

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