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3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
A gate at the stairs:
I love coming of age novels, perhaps it is because I still feel like I am deciding who I will become in life. I never know if I should recommend the 'coming of age' novel to others. Since it is a theme I continue to return to, I don't know if others find it as comforting as I do. I also wonder if one day I will grow out of liking this type of book and thus find my answer on whether or not I should have recommended it or not.
All of that being said, I truly enjoyed this book and I want to know what others think of it. Below are a few notes I took while reading and, of course, quotes - really great quotes.
There is an ominous tone that hovers over the story.Tassie continuously says 'I didn't understand then', 'I would understand later' etc. At first I didn't understand the point. It seemed overdone, but as the novel progresses it makes perfect sense. There is a tone to growing up, the realization that you don't understand what is going on all the time and that one day it might make sense.
Even the parts that are alluded to are so striking when they finally occur that their foreshadowed occurrences fade away at the beauty of the scene itself.
The last line of the novel was strange and did not seem like it flowed with the rest of the book, but I think that's my only real criticism.
Really beautiful quotes:
'Which I never grew tired of, until I did'.
"It was like the classic scene in the movies when one lover is on the train and one is on the platform, and the train starts to take off and the one on the platform starts to trot along and then sprint and then gives up all together...except in this case I was all the parts."
"Life was spent in all sorts of ways."
"We put our things in storage, which was a metaphor for being twenty."
I love coming of age novels, perhaps it is because I still feel like I am deciding who I will become in life. I never know if I should recommend the 'coming of age' novel to others. Since it is a theme I continue to return to, I don't know if others find it as comforting as I do. I also wonder if one day I will grow out of liking this type of book and thus find my answer on whether or not I should have recommended it or not.
All of that being said, I truly enjoyed this book and I want to know what others think of it. Below are a few notes I took while reading and, of course, quotes - really great quotes.
There is an ominous tone that hovers over the story.Tassie continuously says 'I didn't understand then', 'I would understand later' etc. At first I didn't understand the point. It seemed overdone, but as the novel progresses it makes perfect sense. There is a tone to growing up, the realization that you don't understand what is going on all the time and that one day it might make sense.
Even the parts that are alluded to are so striking when they finally occur that their foreshadowed occurrences fade away at the beauty of the scene itself.
The last line of the novel was strange and did not seem like it flowed with the rest of the book, but I think that's my only real criticism.
Really beautiful quotes:
'Which I never grew tired of, until I did'.
"It was like the classic scene in the movies when one lover is on the train and one is on the platform, and the train starts to take off and the one on the platform starts to trot along and then sprint and then gives up all together...except in this case I was all the parts."
"Life was spent in all sorts of ways."
"We put our things in storage, which was a metaphor for being twenty."
I'm pretty sure that in the latest revision of the 1001 Books List they had some kind of clause that meant you could only add books about young people finding themselves at university. This time we had Tassie Keltjin, a midwestern farm girl, who travels to the more cosmopolitan middle class city of Troy to go to university. She makes few friends, and takes a job as a nanny for a glamorous older couple. As her life starts to pull towards the bright lights and brioche, a series of events sends her into a tumble that only her family can get her out of.
A Gate at the Stairs is rather beautifully written, and I felt for Tassie, although not for her strange employers and even stranger boyfriend. I wasn't convinced of his place in the story at all. The rest though, is sound and moving, and well worth a read.
A Gate at the Stairs is rather beautifully written, and I felt for Tassie, although not for her strange employers and even stranger boyfriend. I wasn't convinced of his place in the story at all. The rest though, is sound and moving, and well worth a read.
emotional
sad
There's a lot I could say about this book. Beautiful writing, even if it is hard to imagine some of these thoughts coming from a 20-year-old's head....interesting things to think about...a ridiculous ending (I mean the last two sentences and nothing more)....a few characters that are all too witty (and all in the same way) being the only true downside.....but I think this sums up my thoughts best.
i think my least favorite lorrie moore (so far), but still lorrie moore, which is to say: still liked it a lot
can't say i would recommend the reading experience of finishing it while sitting in the window seat of a 7am flight, and then having to attempt to communicate to the two napping strangers next to you (through your fogged-up-from-tears glasses and snot-filled mask) that you need to go to the bathroom to cry.
can't say i would recommend the reading experience of finishing it while sitting in the window seat of a 7am flight, and then having to attempt to communicate to the two napping strangers next to you (through your fogged-up-from-tears glasses and snot-filled mask) that you need to go to the bathroom to cry.
It took me a while to get into this book...all of the characters seemed to be leading such pathetic lives, but then I got engaged by Moore's humor and wordplay. I haven't laughed so much reading a novel in a long time, but the themes are utterly serious and very interesting. Great way to start my 2010 reading.
It read like a collection of short stories. It was interesting but not really cohesive.
Moore has a singular voice that is a pleasure to read, though this book's plot takes several clunky turns and its takes on the hot issues of 2002 have not aged particularly well.
I wish I could give this 2.5 stars. For the first two-thirds of the book, I really did not enjoy reading it. This is mainly due to two things: 1) The narrator uses the past perfect (?) tense a lot. "I didn't know that was the last time I would see him" or "I would never again see that color and not think of her" or "Years later, a boyfriend would ask why I ever believed such a silly thing." It took me out of any sense of tension in the plot, and made me not really care about the characters, because it seemed like their story was over before it was really told. This brings me to problem #2: characters are introduced early on, with clear conflicts, and then aren't even mentioned until the last 60 pages of the book, when the main character realizes, "Oh, yeah! Why haven't I been thinking about these people the whole time?" I realize this is probably intended, but the effect was obnoxious, and made me want to quit the book..
The last third of the book was worth sticking it out, though. Bottom line: I love Lorrie Moore's short stories, and I think this novel would have worked better as a collection of stories about these characters.
The last third of the book was worth sticking it out, though. Bottom line: I love Lorrie Moore's short stories, and I think this novel would have worked better as a collection of stories about these characters.
I can’t believe this was written by the same person who wrote Like Life, one of my favorite short story collections. I absolutely hated this book.