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Loading... A Gate at the Stairsby Lorrie Moore
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  ckopphills | Nov 25, 2009 |  Tassie Keltjin is the star of this book. She is college student who gets a job as a nanny for a restaurant owner and her husband who are adopting a baby. The baby they get turns out to be mixed race, which causes some problems along the way. Tassie sees no situation that does not deserve a wisecrack, even in the most inappropriate of circumstances. The humor (which is my style and I appreciated) and mood in the book often reminded me of Vonnegut, although the writing seemed much more literate, or at least striving for a higher level than Kurt was looking for. Near the end of the novel, when the author suddenly used the word “squat” in its slang, equivalent of “nothing” sense, the Vonnegut comparison seemed more obvious. The author seemed to me to have given up on any sort of plot quite a ways from the end of the book. I found the last 75 pages or so a slow slog. (  ) BillPilgrim | Nov 24, 2009 | Meh. I love Lorrie Moore's short stories and I knew a Moore novel would be too much of a good thing, and that was basically how I felt when I finished this book. I first read the New Yorker excerpt of this book a couple months before it came out, and I feel like that excerpt made more of an impression on me--I felt like I knew the character more, understood her better--than the 300 pages about her did. That said, some beautiful winter imagery, which I'm a sucker for. (  ) releach | Nov 23, 2009 | This book had me laughing unreasonably just minutes before making me sob, just minutes before suffocating me with the weight of grief, before slowly lifting me back on my feet again, and finally even laughing again. And that was just in the last 50 pages. Aside from the mood swings at the end, this book contains the most delightfully astute, clever, gorgeous writing I think I have ever seen. You can feel a playfulness in the language, through Moore's character's quips and linguistic foibles and gorgeously detailed descriptions. This book feels so real, it's characters so accurate, you're sure you've not only met them before, but have known them all along. (  ) RachelWeaver | Nov 20, 2009 | I really liked this book! There were so many twists and turns in the plot that I was not expecting. I am a big fan of Morre's writing anyway, but I think this is one of her best books. I enjoyed reading it and recommend it to others. ( ) angelswing | Nov 6, 2009 | 
 As the drifts of perfectly turned moments mount up about the reader's shoulders, along with a corresponding paucity of dramatic incident, forward motion becomes increasingly difficult. Moore is a great writer, but you wish that every once in a while, she would settle for just being good.  Moore has performed a brilliant feat. She has retained the shining, fluid, and, yes, funny surface of her earlier work. But she has also given us a narrator who attempts to peer through the shimmering veil of language to the truth behind.  What Moore crafts is so like life that to condemn Tassie for the ways in which she fails and falls short as a person would demand that we examine such behavior in ourselves. Thank goodness this book is funny, otherwise, it would be nearly unbearable. Aggressively clever, meticulously crafted -- and exhausting. Great writers usually present us with mysteries, but the mystery Lorrie Moore presents consists of appearing genial, joshing and earnest at once — unmysterious, in other words, yet still great. She’s a discomfiting, sometimes even rageful writer, lurking in the disguise of an endearing one.
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:56:29 -0400)
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Lorrie Moore is a gifted writer who made me laugh, gasp, and tear up -- all this without sentimental writing. Her sharp sense of humor and amazing observations of people and landscape make her writing worth reading. However, I felt the novel lacked something. She seems to throw in a bit of everything (Jane Eyre references, 9/11, race relations, gender wars, urban versus rural), and the result was that the story became unfeeling at times. Sometimes, it was as if Moore wanted to show off her prowess as a writer and thinker (in essence, she behaved like some of her posturing characters). Aside from Tassie, few characters in this book are approachable. Perhaps that was Moore's point. Still, Tassie's growth as a person seemed to depend on the one-dimensional behavior of the characters around her, particularly the male characters.
I believe this is a book worth reading. It's thought provoking and well written. But I'd read it for Tassie and for the writing, not for the story or the supporting characters. (