badcushion 's review for:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

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So, it's coming down to the end of the year, and I have a limited amount of time to hit my book count goal, and I'm cranky now that I've wasted a couple days on this book yet I can't bring myself to finish it. It's pretentious, and that was fine, it still seemed relatively worthwhile, the story of a college girl becoming a nanny for an eccentric couple and their recently adopted biracial daughter. College kids are often newly pretentious, so that was fitting for a while. Then we get to overhear the long white-privilege-guilt conversations of the parents of the other adoptees of color in town, and that was....something. But I was about halfway through the book and I really wanted to be able to count it on my list, so on I pressed. And then it turns out the Brazilian guy the nanny was dating was actually a terrorist? I think? And he wasn't Brazilian? I am sure there's some theme going on here about race and class and religion and pretention, but at that point none of the characters in the book retained any appeal for me, except the biracial child, and she is like two years old so doesn't have a lot to add to the conversation. I'm going to get out while the getting is good, and recommend you do the same. Also I wouldn't give his book any stars but I couldn't figure out how to review it without first rating it, so I'm gonna go see if I can delete that star now.