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tamccafferty 's review for:
A Gate at the Stairs
by Lorrie Moore
What I enjoyed most about this book, especially at first, was about how true to life it was. Tassie's many rambling tangents reminded me of my own wandering mind and for that I liked them. It was just when the book became precisely the opposite--unrealistic and dreamlike, if not nightmarish at times–-when I started to dislike it. Once I got halfway through the book, it almost seemed as if Moore was trying too hard to avoid being cliche and took a step too far into the bizarre. Ultimately, this book needed to decide whether it wanted to be realistic fiction or not, because it was strangely straddling a line in between, and it left me feeling very unsettled and dissatisfied. I had expected it to be a story of learning about the love that comes unexpectedly from babysitting others' children, and the struggles of adoption, and while a majority of the book--the best parts--focused on that, it left all of those realms very rough and unfinished. The book was strongest in its telling of the relationship between Tassie and Emmie, and I wish it could've stayed centered more in that as I'd expected it to.
With all that said, it is an original, surprising book with extraordinarily beautiful sections of musing about life and growing up. I was very interested in the many subjects it brushed upon: personal awakening while in college, farming families, military families, adoption, and babysitting, but I just wish it could've identified its center before getting deemed complete and releasable.
With all that said, it is an original, surprising book with extraordinarily beautiful sections of musing about life and growing up. I was very interested in the many subjects it brushed upon: personal awakening while in college, farming families, military families, adoption, and babysitting, but I just wish it could've identified its center before getting deemed complete and releasable.