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A Gate at the Stairs

3.12 of 5 stars 3.12 · rating details · 10,442 ratings · 2,501 reviews

With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a 'half-Jewish' farmer’s daughter from the plains of the Midwest, has come to university - escaping her provincial home to encounter the complex world of culture and politics. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is...more

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Published (first published September 1st 2009)

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Apr 24, 2013 Megan Baxter rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It has been a long time since I disliked a book this much. There was a moment on Sunday when the urge to throw it across the room and be done with it forever was so strong I had to clench my hands around the spine to keep myself from doing it. This was made more imperative by the fact that I was standing outside in a bus terminal at the time, and this was a library book.

There will be spoilers. I'm not marking them, because I want people to read them and then avoid this book like the plague.

Why d...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Josh Ang rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The problem with this book is that it has no centre. Moore can't decide if she wants it to be about the travails of 20-year-old Tassie who grapples with being a country girl thrown into the big city campus (alarm bells rang in my head at the pointedness of making her half-Jewish as well) or about the 40- something chef Sarah, with a mysterious past and who adopts a little girl of mixed race parentage.

For a large part of the story, Sarah looms uncertainly as a close-to-central character, likeabl...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Barbara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was eager to read this book, especially because I have heard and read such special things about Lorrie Moore. I came to the conclusion that I really did not enjoy this, but I am hesitant to give it less than 3 stars.

Moore has presented us with a coming of age story about a young lady, Tassie, from the mid-west who has entered a small undistinguished college a few hours from her home. There were amusing moments, there were scenes of passionate sex and even a finely described dining scene. Overa...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Dori Ostermiller rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a huge Lorrie Moore fan and gobble up everything she publishes, so I picked up this book with great anticipation. Moore is one of the most witty, entertaining and insightful prose stylists we have in contemporary fiction. She is also sharply observant of cultural insanities and inconsistencies. I loved the beginning of this novel! But about 2/3 of the way through, when the plot went haywire, I felt puzzled and disappointed. It felt like Moore didn't know how to shape this story and so start...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2010

The plot of this novel is all over the place. It is about Tassie a twenty year old college sophomore as she decides to take a job babysitting to earn some money. She isn't really a prototypical college student. She is one of the weird ones. She doesn't go to frat parties or muse over indie music with a PBR, she doesn't get involved in student organizations or anything really. She plays the bass, but doesn't join a band. She is a loner and a muser and it is through her eyes that you see the world...more The plot of this novel is all over the place. It is about Tassie a twenty year old college sophomore as she decides to take a job babysitting to earn some money. She isn't really a prototypical college student. She is one of the weird ones. She doesn't go to frat parties or muse over indie music with a PBR, she doesn't get involved in student organizations or anything really. She plays the bass, but doesn't join a band. She is a loner and a muser and it is through her eyes that you see the world.

It is just after 9/11 but Tassie isn't that affected by those terrible events. Like many outsiders they are simply terrible events, and they haven't particularly shaken her to her core like so many of your typical (especially over-emotional) student. And so she meets Sarah Brink, her new employer looking to adopt a baby (and possessor of a particularly morbid, awkward sense of humor), and things get strange. There are questions of terrorism blended into the mix, questions of the military, questions of race and especially questions of the white middle class.

Through all of this Tassie stumbles through, trying to find her connection to the world. This is how the book shines. It is about the strange people who strange things happen to. If you sit down and write out all of the plot points it seems to much and too jarring. Through the narrative, however, it makes its own sense. Things stop and start at inconvenient times because that's what happens. People act stupid because that is what people do. Through it all, Tassie puzzles her way through. She has a distinct personality at the beginning, but that is the personality of someone trying to discover a personality. Of a supporting cast member trying to be worthy of being the lead of their own life. There isn't really anything shocking in the end, but the character begins to get there. Despite being buffeted about by the events of her life in the span of this novel, she begins to take root and stand firm.

Moore in her long forms is less hilarious and less bitter, less tragic and less sardonic, but this book moves extremely well--especially in its lurching--and is fantastically written. Despite being older, Moore nails the subtype of twenty year old she's writing. There are pop culture references thrown around a lot, but they stand up for the character and make logical sense. It doesn't feel (ala Tom Wolfe's abomination I Am Charlotte Simmons) like an older author making believe, poorly, that she is younger. It just feels like the character.

Despite all of this, I feel it still feels short of the achievements of her collections of stories, which are end to end stunning, but the book remains wonderful and that's enough for me.(less)

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Nov 20, 2009 Iris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Iris by: Lorrie Moore at the Rain Taxi Book Festival, October 2009

Shelves: novels

An urgent novel. My impulse to savor Moore's prose was overthrown by a mania to follow it to the end of the line; I devoured it in a day. Only upon closing the book is it apparent that "A Gate at the Stairs" owes its allure to mystery. Each relationship is replete with humor, confusion and half-truths; each theme (learning, adoption/fertility, race, names, guilt) is equally significant to Moore's portrait of contemporary life, making it the rare, great fiction to depict how 9/11 and the events t...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Brittany M. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can't decide how I feel about this book. Compared to her other novels and short stories, this book felt both cloying and bloated. You can feel her acute wit swimming just beneath the surface, but it's obscured by half-hearted attempts to keep the story feeling "current" (I.E. the songs Tassie plunks on her bass) coupled with an overkill of Moore's trademark turns of phrase. Additionally, the plot feels jumbled at points. The stories of the adoption, the boyfriend, and the brother didn't seem a...more

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Sep 14, 2009 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some reviewers are responding to this novel much as I expected: "Moore is too clever by half, the voice of her narrator is too mature, the plot is unbelievable." My response is that she IS too clever by half, and -- so what? The narrator has the voice of a 50-ish academic professor because that is who is speaking ; she makes references to "later I would find out," or "another boyfriend would later tell me." As for the plot and its spotty verisimilitude, I would suggest that reviewers who sugges...more

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Aug 28, 2009 Amber rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love Lorrie Moore's writing. I love it so much that I spent my college years ripping her off (well, trying to anyway) in fiction writing workshops. Her short story collections rank high among my favorite books. But I've never fallen in love with any of her novels in the same way. All of those wonderful little moments of wry humor amidst sadness are there, but the structure of it just doesn't quite work for me. There's a bit with a college boyfriend who isn't what he appears that gets handled i...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Patricia Murphy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I love Lorrie Moore. And I liked this book. But I was talking to a writer-friend of mine, someone who has published & edited more books than most people have read, and I told him that when I got to page 200 or so of this book it "jumped the shark." He asked, "What does that mean?" and I said "I have no idea." Luckily John was in the next room and explained, "It refers to a Happy Days episode where Fonzie water skis over a shark." There. It's true. There are several sections of dialogue in th...more

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Mar 28, 2010 Shasta8sisyphus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

gems so far:

A dialog between a young college student and her new employer:

"'Bach's first French suite. Do you know it?'
After some clicking and static, [the cd:] began, stately and sad. 'I think so,' I said, not sure at all. My friends had already begun to lie, to bluff a sophistication they felt that at the end of the ten-second bluff they would authentically possess. But I was not only less inclined this way but less skilled. 'Maybe not, though,' I added. Then, 'Wait, it's ringing a bell.'
'Oh...more

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Feb 05, 2010 DLKeur rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: an airhead

Try angsty, "atmospheric", and utterly self-indulgent, never mind the fact that it's too obvious that her editor must be illiterate. Either that or she knows someone or is related to someone to get this kind of bottom-of-the-pit novel published by a major publishing house.

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Jan 23, 2011 Ravi Jain rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I came to this novel with great expectations, considering the praise heaped on it (dozens of top 10 and bestseller lists). And indeed from the first few sentences you had the feeling you were in the hands of a sure, masterful storyteller. But over the course of the novel it unraveled and became an inchoate mix of sophomoric polemic, coming-of-age story, carictaurish depictions of terrorists, and clever wordplay.

The story's vehicle is Tassie, a 20-yr old college freshman who becomes a nanny for...more I came to this novel with great expectations, considering the praise heaped on it (dozens of top 10 and bestseller lists). And indeed from the first few sentences you had the feeling you were in the hands of a sure, masterful storyteller. But over the course of the novel it unraveled and became an inchoate mix of sophomoric polemic, coming-of-age story, carictaurish depictions of terrorists, and clever wordplay.

The story's vehicle is Tassie, a 20-yr old college freshman who becomes a nanny for a wealthy, over-educated, white liberal couple who adopt an infant girl who is part African-American. It is best when it takes us on the journey of an open adoption, that too in a situation where the complication is not only the class and race issues of this particular adoption but the conflicts and emotional fractures of the adopting parents. The adoption story is in fact where the novel's heart lies, and where it is not only sweet and funny but heartbreakingly sad; the latter so much so that I had to put the put book aside at times. Along the way we get lots of biting comments on the class and social differences between the liberal college town where Tassie goes to school and her country roots.

However all this gets buried in extraneous sub-plots: Tassie's infatuation with a classmate (wont give the spoiler here), her brother Robert's aimless stumbling into volunteering for duty in Afghanistan, and her ambivalent relationships with her parents. The worst sections are pages and pages where the politics of interracial adoption are debated by a group of parents whom Tassie listens to while babysitting -- a clumsy and transparent device for directly inserting polemic and social commentary into the novel without bothering to give them the clothing of character and plot. The continual wordplay by Tasie, her room-mate Murph, her brother and her father are wearing. Finally, like so many contemporary novels, the male characters are the worst and receive no compassion - the confused brother, the vain and selfish husband, the hopeless boyfriend, and so on.

All in all, disappointing and not worth the effort. (less)

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Mar 25, 2010 Ed rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, 2-stars, read-on-kindle, new-author-to-me, tournament-of-books-2010

I picked up Lorrie Moore's "A Gate At The Stairs" based on the many appearances it made on the best-of/year-end book lists for 2009. Although, while I do my best to avoid reading reviews beforehand, I couldn't help but notice the star-ratings were pretty muddy on it.

While the book was readable, I felt there was just always something very odd/off about it. Some books you know are great from the first page (or even sentence!), but "Gate" had me still hanging when I sat down to finish it. Even with...more

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Jan 02, 2010 Jim Marshall rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Moving into the dean's office has kept me from writing reviews of most of the books I've read this year, but there have been a number of really fine stories published, and I wanted to share a list of ten that I think you might enjoy:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. This quiet, unassuming book centers on a young college student who stumbles into a babysitting job for a troubled couple who have adopted a mixed-race child. And then hell opens. The sentences are so well tuned that you can move...more Moving into the dean's office has kept me from writing reviews of most of the books I've read this year, but there have been a number of really fine stories published, and I wanted to share a list of ten that I think you might enjoy:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. This quiet, unassuming book centers on a young college student who stumbles into a babysitting job for a troubled couple who have adopted a mixed-race child. And then hell opens. The sentences are so well tuned that you can move past one and then three beats later realize you need to go back--you've got to savor the observation longer.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. If you want to know what Katrina was "like" for someone who lived through it, and if want to know how cruelly incompetent our government's response was, don't miss this book. Zeitoun himself is a family man hero, and when he is taken into custody without trial as a presumed terrorist after days of saving others you begin to understand once again "why they hate us."

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a rich, multi-layered, deeply researched book that centers on a fictional young man who finds himself as a cook and later as an assistant to Mexican painter Diego Rivera, a confidante to Rivera's wife Frida Kahlo, and then secretary to Lev Trotsky, who lived with the Rivera's when he was banished almost everywhere else. Maybe the best book Kingsolver has written.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. A kind of follow up to her masterful memoir The Glass Castle, this book tells the extraordinary story of Walls's maternal grandmother--a rancher, a teacher, a horsewoman, a pilot, a survivor--from her grandmother's point of view and gives us a world that is seldom made visible through women's eyes. Could not stop reading it.

Jeff in Venice/Death in Varana by Geoff Dyer. If you haven't had a chance to read Dyer yet, you may want to start here. Part travelogue, part meditation, part personal history and memoir, Dyer has a terrific way of bringing you with him as he explores spaces well off the tourist maps and well below the site lines of most people's self awareness. He's an unapologetic avoider of safety and common sense, and that allows him to get inside places most of us steer clear of.

Methland by Nick Reding. A non-fictional account of how chrystal meth devastated a small town in rural Iowa, told through the stories of the local doctor, the mayor, and the chief of police. The stories are heartbreaking, but the prose is like a carefully sharpened knife that opens everything to view.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. A series of interrelated short stories about a morally ambiguous, often cranky, sometimes insightful 8th grade math teacher working in Somewhere Else, Maine. You can't really love Olive, but you find yourself glad that you know that such complicated people are out there.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. In my review, I called this a 'muscle car of a book," and I continue to think that's true. It's a churning exploration that moves from the Dominican Republic to New York, from the present back to the past, with shifting narrative voices and authorial footnotes that historicize events in helpful and often ironic ways. An incredible read.

Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. This volume is an extraordinary collection of spoken and written language--excerpts from Winston Churchill's diary, from Roosevelt's speeches, from soldiers' letters home, from Japanese newspapers--that are juxtaposed in ways that help us see how complicated and fragmented the "good war" actually was. I couldn't stop reading it.

West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary. A memoir by a Afghan man who moves back and forth between the U.S. and home, trying hard to understand and embrace both cultures and making clear why that is virtually impossible to do.
(less)

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Oct 31, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 04, 2009 Lauren rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one

The end sequence took hold of me. One hundred pages into it, I hated this book. The last twenty pages actually seemed like something that might happen, and it resonnated with somethings happening in my life. Moore is out of her league her, writing about things that she does not know. Loorie Moore is 52. She has not been an undergraduate in college for 30 years and it showed in this book. When she used the band name Modest Mouse, it sounded clunky, fake, phony as my good friend Holden might say....more

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Aug 30, 2009 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read an uncorrected proof of this and the experience was slightly jarring - typoes, sections that repeated themselves that I wasn't sure were intentional, etc. I can't say how close my copy is to the final published version but what I read was what I've come to expect from Moore - it's funny, it's emotionally complex, the prose is easily readable while also remaining incredibly rich, and the narrative voice is compelling to follow. It details roughly one year in the life of Tassie Keltjin, a t...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Michelle Zuppa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was slow going for me at first, unusual for Lorrie Moore, one of my favorite authors. But, by the end, I was completely sold by the voice, present throughout and a wonderful incarnation of Moore's typical sharp, funny, connection-seeking heroines, and by the overall arc. This arc resolved itself in subtle fashion, true to the actual coming-of-age of a 20-year old college student. Since finishing it a couple days ago, the whole and meaning have been resonating.

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Aug 06, 2011 Larry Hoffer added it · review of another edition

I've read one Lorrie Moore short story collection and her other novel, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital. She's a great writer. While often she creates characters with interesting quirks, she's really at her best when she's depicting everyday stories and everyday people.

I enjoyed this book a lot. This is the story of Tassie Keltjin, a Midwestern college student in the throes of no ambition and general boredom, who is hired by a couple to watch their baby. As anyone who has had a nanny, babysitter o...more

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Aug 02, 2011 JChipol added it · review of another edition

If you read critics reviews of this book, they generally say the same: they love it. Reader’s reviews are much more diverse, with equal amounts of 1 star ratings to 5 stars. The person who lent me this book raved about it highly, so I was keen to read it and find out what it was about as she ‘didn’t want to spoil it’.

The Gate at The Stairs is a clever book and one which touches on some very thought provoking themes.

The story is primarily about Tassie Keltjin, the narrator of the story, a 20-yea...more If you read critics reviews of this book, they generally say the same: they love it. Reader’s reviews are much more diverse, with equal amounts of 1 star ratings to 5 stars. The person who lent me this book raved about it highly, so I was keen to read it and find out what it was about as she ‘didn’t want to spoil it’.

The Gate at The Stairs is a clever book and one which touches on some very thought provoking themes.

The story is primarily about Tassie Keltjin, the narrator of the story, a 20-year-old Midwest farm girl who is now away at college in a larger city than that in which she grew up.

The period is 20th Century America, under the shadow of the Twin Towers, which happened just a year earlier, and while it is not a simple tale of the loss of innocence, there is a definite feeling that Tassie - and therefore the American Midwest - can no longer seek refuge in the American dream, if indeed it ever existed. Maybe as Tassie has grown older it is also about her eyes opening to the wider issues in America and the world.

Tassie finds employment as a babysitter when she meets Sarah Brink, a 45-year-old restaurateur, who is far too busy and successful for a child. The child she and her husband Edward eventually adopt is a mixed-race toddler, Mary-Emma, or Emmie.

In this American consumerist society Tassie notices that Edward and Sarah write separate cheques at the adoption agency office. “Edward and I are splitting this down the middle,” says Sarah. Even the act of gaining a child seems somehow clinical and consumerist, let alone the fact that looking after and raising the child is left to someone else so that parents can work. Amongst the questions that the adoption, and attitudes to it, raise Tassie is also forced to question America’s attitudes to race, while she babysits the children of Sarah’s weekly group who meet to discuss race and America’s attitudes to non-white citizens.

Everything in Tassie’s world is a complicated and intricate affair. “My whole life feels like a horror show of slowly moving cars,” Sarah exclaims at one point. (The full impact of this statement is revealed at a later time in the story.) Tassie’s observations of the world around her touch on many themes; race, trust, consumerism and modern day America, as well as terrorism and loss of innocence.

As I said, the book is a clever one and one that I could happily imagine dissecting at GCSE. I was, however, left throughout wondering whether there was actually a ‘point’ to the book. It was a real and well described slice of life, and, as in real life, there is no resolution. "Shit happens", as they say. It all depends on whether you like to read about real life and the feeling that life’s experience leaves you with, or whether, like me, you need to escape from the banality and unfairness of life and need some kind of ending – not necessarily happy, but just one to mark that the story has ended. I feel like I have opened a window in someone’s life and watched for a while, then shut the window, not really knowing what happens after I’ve left watching.

All in all, the book was clever, and interesting, but not one I can say I was gripped with.

(less)

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May 20, 2013 Bob Pearson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked this book, which is the story of a college freshman woman transitioning to adulthood. Biracial adoption, boyfriend, what happens to her brother and her parents. The landmarks along the path are not surprising. They act more like a novel's stations on a journey. What is nice is Moore's use of and love of language. If the downside of the book is the impression that 20 or more individual events, not organically related, are strung out to bring the narrative along, the neat part is Moore's m...more

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Apr 27, 2013 emi Bevacqua rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, race-relations

This story is about a college student who takes a part-time job as nanny for a couple who have adopted a biracial toddler. The back cover says this book is about race, class, love, and war in America. But I think the author took on more than she could chew.

Lorrie Moore is an entertaining writer; this book had elements of such bright wit but also egregious misses. I kept wondering why all the main character Tassie Keltjin's mortifying mistakes were being cataloged - I honestly couldn't tell if s...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Caren rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Smart and entertaining, full of thoughtful reflections and imperfect people. Moore's novel dissects American fanatasies about families, especially parenting, and she is especially ruthless on the subject of liberal and transracial families. Maybe liposuction would be a better metaphor than dissection, though, as what she's really doing is stripping away the fat in order to get to the hard muscles beneath, the places where core longings and hostilities are finally exposed. It's an interesting nov...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Robert E. Kennedy Library rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tassie Keltjin, the heroine of A Gate at the Stairs, is a farm girl, closet musician, babysitter and college student in Wisconsin. Tassie’s story alternates between her parents’ farm and her life in a fictional midwestern college town.

It’s packed with multiple subplots — in fact, some friends I’ve pressed the book on said it would have worked better as a collection of linked short stories than as a novel, but I respectfully disagree. I experienced the novel first as an audiobook, and then read i...more

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Mar 16, 2013 B. Morrison rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first couple of pages of this novel made me chuckle and look forward to a great read. However, round about page 50 I debated about giving up on the tedious plot. At page 100, terminally bored, I put the book down. I picked it up again a few days later only because it was my book club’s pick for the month.

It begins as Tassie, a college student in Troy, New York, is looking for a job that will start at the beginning of January term. Coming from the small town of Dellacrosse, Troy seems dazzlin...more The first couple of pages of this novel made me chuckle and look forward to a great read. However, round about page 50 I debated about giving up on the tedious plot. At page 100, terminally bored, I put the book down. I picked it up again a few days later only because it was my book club’s pick for the month.

It begins as Tassie, a college student in Troy, New York, is looking for a job that will start at the beginning of January term. Coming from the small town of Dellacrosse, Troy seems dazzlingly cosmopolitan to her, and there are funny snippets of her appreciation its glories—Chinese food! a man wearing jeans and a tie!—and mocking recollections of her hometown’s charms. She eventually lands a job as a babysitter for a couple who don’t yet have a baby.

The plot meanders around as she goes home for Christmas, returns, goes on scouting expeditions with her employer, Sarah, and sometimes Sarah’s creepy husband, Edward, to check out prospective babies for adoption. Eventually, a baby is acquired as a foster child while the adoption proceeds. Other than the baby, none of the characters is particularly likeable. Tassie is—so I am informed—like many young people today (though none of the many I know): sad, discouraged, drifting through life, substituting humor for thought and impulse for decision. The title is explained early and often.

Although a couple of people in my book club liked the book, others shared my two main concerns: plot and character. The plot is all over the place, wandering off in different directions and getting bogged down in lengthy scenes that add nothing to the story. People pop up at the beginning and then disappear until the end. The climaxes seem tacked on to provide drama. As for the characters, they start out rather two-dimensional with a quirk or two pasted on, and then do not develop in the course of the story. A couple of them get sadder.

One person suggested that perhaps these seeming flaws were deliberate on the part of the author. Since the book is from Tassie’s point of view, it is only too likely that she experiences the world as chaotic and unstructured and people as cardboard with amusing quirks. It’s an interesting idea. If true, well, it takes a lot of courage to write such a poorly crafted novel. Perhaps the idea was that the humor would make up for the lack of narrative structure and character development. It certainly is very funny. Moore also employs amazingly original yet apt metaphors.

Perhaps the most interesting comment from my book club was from a person who compared Sarah and Edward to the characters in The Great Gatsby. As Fitzgerald famously said, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” I would say this is true of all the characters, not just Sarah and Edward. Perhaps, then, it is appropriate for the book to be carelessly crafted. Perhaps it is indeed deliberate.(less)

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Mar 15, 2013 Jo Case rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

I first discovered Lorrie Moore through her short stories, which were passionately recommended by Nick Hornby and Dave Eggers. They are intricate portraits of ordinary people living lives that have spun off the road at some point, people in the midst of figuring out where and how they went wrong and if they can find their way back. She combines beautiful sentences and deft imagery with sharp, perfectly tuned dialogue, a wry observer’s humour and deep pathos.

A Gate at the Stairs, her first novel...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Bob Wake rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Gate at the Stairs is a brilliant comic novel about inconsolable grief and loss. (I lost a whole day reading it. Labor Day utterly consumed, family obliterated, along with exercise and square meals.) It’s by far the longest and most ambitious of Lorrie Moore’s three novels to date, risking wide-eyed engagement with thorny issues like racism, war (gender and military), terrorism, and, perhaps the thorniest issue of all: childrearing. Remarkably, she hasn’t altered her patented hyper-comedic sen...more A Gate at the Stairs is a brilliant comic novel about inconsolable grief and loss. (I lost a whole day reading it. Labor Day utterly consumed, family obliterated, along with exercise and square meals.) It’s by far the longest and most ambitious of Lorrie Moore’s three novels to date, risking wide-eyed engagement with thorny issues like racism, war (gender and military), terrorism, and, perhaps the thorniest issue of all: childrearing. Remarkably, she hasn’t altered her patented hyper-comedic sensibility one iota while enlarging her vision.

The brainy 20-year-old narrator, Tassie Kiltjen, a farm-raised Midwestern innocent, heads off to college—thirty minutes from home—and finds herself slipping into a global village quagmire. She becomes a nanny for an adopted biracial two-year-old girl. And she begins dating a young man, a Brazilian student, who, like the family Tassie works for, harbors disturbing secrets. Believe me, some of this material is strong stuff. Horrible. Moore, in the tradition of our very best modern writers, from Flannery O’Connor to David Foster Wallace, uses comedy as a means to accentuate dislocation, anxiety and folly. Her wit and wits in overdrive, Tassie has to awkwardly navigate explicitly post-9/11 social realities. (The story takes place in the year following the September 11th attacks.) Back home, her brother weighs enlisting in the armed forces.

Moore cannily invokes 9/11 as a double-edged metaphor for innocence betrayed. “Despair,” states a character in the novel, “is mistaking a small world for a large one and a large one for a small.” Which is also the unresolved dilemma fueling much of contemporary fiction. The inadequacy of the self. The crushing assault of the ineffable. There’s something going on in Moore’s novel that feels timely and fresh and bracingly edgy. A Gate at the Stairs is uncompromisingly full-strength Lorrie Moore—laden with grotesque puns and jokey patter while remaining thematically complex and fiercely literary—which is to say it’s a great novel on Lorrie Moore’s own idiosyncratic terms. (Reviews have been mixed, to say the least. Malcolm Jones, in Newsweek, sniffs, “You finish the book wondering if it was worth the trouble”; Stephanie Zacharek, over at Salon, scolds the novel for being “exhausting” and “emotionally unsatisfying”; the most evenhanded appraisals I’ve seen so far are the two New York Times reviews, one from Jonathan Lethem, the other from Michiko Kakutani.)(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The author seems too enamored with presenting quirky characterizations instead of digging in and developing actual characters. The story is messy (so quirky! no, not really) and fails to deliver on any of the thuddingly obvious "themes" and "symbols" that are virtually underlined and delivered with a drum roll. I didn't get any sense of the post-9/11 anxiety and tension that enveloped the nation, and most certainly would have impacted a sensitive, intellectual college freshman. Outrageous plot d...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Helen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The blurb probably provides the best summary of this book:
With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a 'half-Jewish' farmer's daughter from the plains of the Midwest, has come to university - escaping her provincial home to encounter the complex world of culture and politics. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is drawn into the life of their newly-adopted child and increasingly c...more

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About Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore was born in Glens Falls, New York in 1957. She attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where she tutored on an Indian reservation, and was editor of the university literary magazine and, at age 19, won Seventeen Magazine’s Fiction Contest. After graduating summa cum laude, she worked in New York for two years before going on to received a Masters in Fine Arts from Cornel...more

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“It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.” — 28 people liked it

“Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.” — 12 people liked it

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