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A Gate at the Stairs

By Lorrie Moore

(21)

| eBook | 9780307273215

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Book Description

In her best-selling story collection, Birds of America (“[it] will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability” —James McManus, front page of The New York Times Book Review), Lorrie Moore wrote about the disconnect between men and women, about the pContinue

In her best-selling story collection, Birds of America (“[it] will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability” —James McManus, front page of The New York Times Book Review), Lorrie Moore wrote about the disconnect between men and women, about the precariousness of women on the edge, and about loneliness and loss.

Now, in her dazzling new novel—her first in more than a decade—Moore turns her eye on the anxiety and disconnection of post-9/11 America, on the insidiousness of racism, the blind-sidedness of war, and the recklessness thrust on others in the name of love.

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.

Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny.

The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.

This long-awaited new novel by one of the most heralded writers of the past two decades is lyrical, funny, moving, and devastating; Lorrie Moore’s most ambitious book to date—textured, beguiling, and wise.

Critics

  • A GATE AT THE STAIRS by Lorrie Moore

    Review by Poornima Apte (SEP 10, 2009) Lorrie Moore’s superb novel, A Gate At The Stairs, is told through the voice of 20-year-old Tassie Keltjin. A farmer’s daughter, Tassie attends a liberal arts college and is slowly navigating the daily intricaci ... (read full critics)

    mostlyfiction published on Thu, 30 Sep 2010

  • A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore - Review by Waterstone's Books Quarterly Online

    Tassie Keltjin leaves her rural home to study in liberal, artsy Troy. She takes a job as a part-time nanny for a white couple and their adopted ‘biracial’ daughter, then she falls in love and becomes increasingly distant from her own family. Fans of ... (read full critics)

    wbqonline published on Wed, 29 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    "... in literature - perhaps as in life - one had to speak not of what the author intended but of what the story intended for itself. The creator was inconvenient - God was dead. But the creation intself had a personality and hopes and its own desires and plans and little winks and dance steps and c ... (continue)

    "... in literature - perhaps as in life - one had to speak not of what the author intended but of what the story intended for itself. The creator was inconvenient - God was dead. But the creation intself had a personality and hopes and its own desires and plans and little winks and dance steps and collaged intent. In this way Jacques Derrida overlapped with Walt Disney. The story itself had feet and a mouth, could walk and talk and speak of its own yearnings!"

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    rayuela said on Feb 28, 2010 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • Wonderful

    The kind of novel that makes you laugh but leaves you devastated at the same time. Clever writing, courageous thoughts and ideas...in my opinion this book is an extraordinary achievement. I agree with Nick Hornby, Moore really is the best American writer or her generation.

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    nuriape said on Mar 7, 2010 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • bits and pieces of good story but...

    Laurie Moore is famous for short stories and what is good in this book could be a short story. There is the story about the perfect middle age couple, adopting a mixed race child, who have one heck of a secret, there's the plain jane babysitter who is dealing with her own double background and seems ... (continue)

    Laurie Moore is famous for short stories and what is good in this book could be a short story. There is the story about the perfect middle age couple, adopting a mixed race child, who have one heck of a secret, there's the plain jane babysitter who is dealing with her own double background and seems to have a penchant for trouble, and then there is political commentary on everything in this fictional college town. But the truth is that as a story, it is all over the place and no one is the least bit interesting except maybe the adopted child. Disappointing

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    Gail Paris said on Jan 25, 2010 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (21)
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  • English Books
  • eBook 336 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0307273210
  • ISBN-13: 9780307273215
  • Publisher: Knopf
  • Pub date: Sep 01, 2009
  • Also available as: Others
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