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A review by eaendter
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
5.0
What an amazing writer. Lorrie Moore is funny, observant, smart, and a magician with words. Her writing is dense with description that is memorable and that gives one a whole new slant on something common. Like describing looking out at window icicles like being caught in the mouth of a monster with jagged teeth. Ew.
The story had great resonance for me. A bright girl from the country goes to a big university and discovers the world while doing a lot of babysitting... This is a post 9/11 tale, however, so things happen that are part of this crazy world we live in now. There are things, though, about being an innocent from the backwaters that she got SO right.
It is also a story about our crazy adoption and foster care system. These tales are familiar to me, since foster parenting is so prevalent a job in our economically depressed town. And one of my friends worked for years for the local CASA--Court Appointed Special Advocates for neglected and abused kids in the foster care system. This particular story is heartrending.
The story had great resonance for me. A bright girl from the country goes to a big university and discovers the world while doing a lot of babysitting... This is a post 9/11 tale, however, so things happen that are part of this crazy world we live in now. There are things, though, about being an innocent from the backwaters that she got SO right.
It is also a story about our crazy adoption and foster care system. These tales are familiar to me, since foster parenting is so prevalent a job in our economically depressed town. And one of my friends worked for years for the local CASA--Court Appointed Special Advocates for neglected and abused kids in the foster care system. This particular story is heartrending.