On My Night Table


A GATE AT THE STAIRS BY LORRIE MOORE

This was so good and I knew from reading the author’s Birds of America (a great book of short stories) a few years ago that she could, as the old chestnut goes, make me laugh and make me cry. With this not that meaty novel, I found myself re-reading passages and laughing out loud and stopping and pausing and thinking about the words and how Lorrie Moore used them.  This is the kind of writing that makes a writer wish/hope/dream they could have a fraction of the talent she has. This is a book to be slowly and thoughtfully read and I am not a slow or overly thoughtful reader. I love to get lost in a book and devour it at whichever pace finds me. With A Gate At The Stairs I took my time and you’ll be glad if you do the same.

The story concerns Tassie a young woman who has moved away from her parent’s kinda sorta hobby farm to go to University. Just before she finishes her first semester, she gets a job as a babysitter to a couple from town who are adopting a baby. That’s pretty much it but Moore explores race, class, religion, love, regret, and family (among other things) in such a 21st century way that it becomes so much more. Tassie, the bass playing, scooter-driving student could be such the cliche in a less capable writer’s hands but she veers from hilariously funny to achingly sad, sometimes in the span of a single paragraph. 

Because the story isn’t super dense and plot-heavy, I am loathe to give away anything and would rather a reader discover the many wonderful and horrible things in this book but if anyone reads or has already read this, I’d love to talk about it.  I guess now I’ll read a stack of comic books to cleanse the literary palate because prose will seem wooden and clunky and amateurish (insert insincere self deprecating comment here) compared to this great read. As you may have noticed, I love throwing around superlatives so that they become meaningless and trite, but I totally loved this book. It is sofa king good you have to get a copy and read it.