A Gate at the Stairs

Absolutely loved this book. In fact, I think its the best book I've read in a while. Not only was it well written, but it was laugh out loud funny AND very meaningful. This is a difficult balance for an author to create, but Lorrie Moore has done it-and done it very well. For the serious reader, this is a must.

Beautiful, gorgeous prose that took my breath away and kept my eyes glued to the page to follow every comma, adjective, and sentence length. Tassie is captivating; the brightest observer and a character for whom we want everything good to follow now that she has come of age. This book has the quietude of poetry and the suspense of true crime. But guess what? It's literature. Run, don't walk, read, read, read. Everything is here: the Midwesterner's view of NYC, the New Yorker's view of the Midwest, innocence and its loss, love, the fullness of nature, quirky music, sex, race relations, parenting, childhood, a foodie's paradise, and potatoes. A triumph! Now I must get on with my life.

Lorrie Moore's books are often described as funny. I would choose a different word. Most writers tell a story, but Moore tells a wonderful, engaging story and also delights and surprises with passages that stop the reader because those passages have to be read again and savored. Oddly I don't find that her amazing twists of words and thought detract from the story at all. "CONTENTS MAY SHIFT DURING THE FLIGHT, we have been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about the discontents? Would they please shift, too? ........Below us moved the continued squares of greens and brown that Rothko never got to." Along with the delight and surprises, there is always the counterbalance of the deep sadness her stories convey. The characters are oh so real and often live with loneliness and sadness. This book is the full package. Also, those of us who live in Madison,her hometown, find a bit of a biting, fun resemblance between Troy and where we live.

I am apparently incapable of writing a review without spoilers, so if you haven't read this book, please don't read further. The title and the cover illustration of this book made me think of Jacob's Ladder - the ladder, seen by Jacob in a dream, which reached to the heavens. After envisioning the ladder filled with angels, Jacob awoke and said, ""This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Directly after the terrible events of 9/11, one of my primary feelings was surprise - surprise that the rest of the United States and the world actually cared about what had happened in New York City. In my insular shock, I had thought of the tragedy as one that belonged to New Yorkers alone. How wrong I was. In A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore, among other things, explores how the trauma of 9/11 casts a shadow even in a small Midwestern college town, and upon a kind, dreamy student named Tassie. Moore paints her story with watercolors, not oils. Tassie, like so many young people, drifts her way into first the petty plot points and then the sorrows that mark her life. Tassie is muted in her reactions and not particularly self-aware, which may be a blessing in part for her, as it softens her grief. She is kind, though, and funny, and she learns. Lorrie's characterization is an imperfect success. Sometimes I fully bought Tassie, other times it seemed to me Moore was putting clever, authorly words into her mouth. She drifts in and out of Muslim practice with little impact or explanation. Tassie's life at school seems colorless, and the scenes set on the farm never fully resonate. This revelation of Reynaldo's identity seemed a bit odd and awkward. I did appreciate how some characters made a strong impression and never reappeared. Others, like Tassie's mother, were pitiful and cruel in their strangeness, yet receded into the background. Tassie's brother seemingly fell into this category until the events towards the end of the book. I thought brittle Sarah Brink was particularly well drawn - so tightly would, so unhappy, yet so tender to her tiny potatoes. And this is not a fairytale. Mary-Emma does not show up at the playground for one final farewell. The child herself is appealing (great vocabulary, though perhaps that's necessary in a nonvisual medium.) This book did make me think. We all grow up with tragedies - an unloving parent, the death of a beloved friend or teacher, a bully at school, a broken heart. Many of us are unfortunate enough to experience our own personal horrors that are as devastating, to us, as the September 11th attacks. Who ever really is the same after the death or permanent loss of a child or a partner or a sibling? Moore shows some possible results through the lives of her characters. Some cut and run, like the Brinks. Some are fully broken. And some grow stronger, like Moore's Tassie. There will always be those we have loved and lost and who we will never see or hold

In this brilliant, bittersweet, skillfully constructed coming-of-age novel, the world turns out to be precarious: no promise made by an adult to a child can really be counted on. If the adults don't know what they are doing, how can the children make the transition to adulthood? This is not a story of hope but of survival. By the end of the book, Tassie Keltjin, our heroine, has grown and learned, but she has also been scraped and damaged like the vegetables cultivated by her potato-farmer father -- the sweetest potatoes, we are reminded, are the ones with bruises, a metaphor not only for Tassie but for many of the characters in this unforgettable novel. Tassie is a 20-year-old wise-cracking, bass-playing farmer's daughter off to college in the liberal midwest university town Troy; she brings with her a deeply appealing earnestness and innocence. Unfortunately, this is rarely answered with full sincerity -- either by her exotic Brazlian boyfriend (whom she meets in her "Intro to Sufism" class) or by her employer, the beguiling chef and restaurateur Sarah Brink, whose adopted daughter she is hired to care for. That daughter, Mary-Emma, is herself suggestively suspended between categories: both black and white, loved and abandoned, neither fully "Mary" nor "Emma." Mary-Emma, like Tassie, is on her way to becoming a person, as we hear in her expanding vocabulary (used mostly to express her enthusiasm for her new family); in the dialogue between Tassie and Mary-Emma, Lorrie Moore captures the two-year-old's sweetness with a skill that will break your heart. If Tassie is damaged by many of her relationships and experiences (not to spoil, I won't describe these in more detail), she also is comforted and repaired by her courageous and loving mother and father, who we come to see have implanted her with the human qualities (and the sense of humor) that she needs to grow and to survive. If more than one mother in this book just gives up, Tassie's mother, even as she suffers, holds to her path. As Moore writes in a somewhat different context: "Of course King Solomon was right. The woman brought before him with the disputed baby, the one who consented to the infant's being cut in half, was not the real mother." Lorrie Moore is known for her short stories and elegant, stripped-down story-like novels. This book demonstrates that she is also an expert at holding together a longer, more complex structure, with cross-lights and thematic patterns (like the theme of motherhood mentioned above). The book also draws upon political events and issues (like inter-racial adoption, racial profiling, 9/11, class division) without riding them like a hobbyhorse; the contemporary world is a backdrop against which we observe Tassie's growing sense of human responsibility. Oh yes, and almost nobody can put together a sentence or a brief description as cleverly and seductively as Lorrie Moore does. That almost goes without saying: Open the book anywhere -- You will want to