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A review by paulamw
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
3.0
This is a very hard book to write about. Moore's writing is very smart and funny, but this is not a funny book. Many times I found that her writing style got in the way of the story. It was a bit like enjoying the individual foods at a dinner, but finding in the end that they did not make a meal. I know that Ms. Moore's first book was a short story collection, and that is what this book could have been.
Tassie Keltjin is a college student in Illinois, looking for a part-time job as a babysitter. She is hired by Sarah Brink to take care of the child she is adopting, but it turns out that the child has not yet been chosen. There is plenty of story in this plot line, but Moore keeps taking off in other directions. September 11th is mentioned early on, and once you invoke 9/11 it becomes the elephant in the room. But we hear nothing much about it, nor see any of the effects of that event until near the end of the book when Tassie's brother, Robert, enlists in the army. However, he seems to enlist largely because he doesn't know what else to do with his life, not as a result of 9/11. The relationship between Tassie and Robert figures large at the end of the book, but no time is really taken to give us a true sense of the depth of that relationship. 9/11 is also tied in through a boyfriend who may or may not be a terrorist, but the only act of betrayal he commits is against Tassie. The fact of his political leanings is completely irrelevant and distracting. There are other distractions such as this. Her characters are interesting, but there are just too many of them. I was also disappointed in the very cliche depictions of the narrow-minded people in Tassie's hometown of Dellacrosse and the clueless liberals of Troy, where Tassie attends college. I'm from Illinois, and I live in a college town, and the broad strokes Ms. Moore uses to portray these populations is very old hat. She does much better with the individual characters and should have simply stuck to them. The attitudes of the country folk and the city slickers were, again, not really relevant to the story. Also irrelevant is the fact that the child Sarah and her husband Edward adopt is multi-racial. Much time is given to this aspect, but it does not have anything to do with what ultimately happens to Sarah, Edward and the daughter they choose to adopt, Mary-Emma. The only redeeming facet of this book is Moore's writing which is great fun to read. Moore also did create sufficient suspense around Sarah and Edward to make it worthwhile to see how that plot turned out. Overall, however, the book was a disappointment.
Tassie Keltjin is a college student in Illinois, looking for a part-time job as a babysitter. She is hired by Sarah Brink to take care of the child she is adopting, but it turns out that the child has not yet been chosen. There is plenty of story in this plot line, but Moore keeps taking off in other directions. September 11th is mentioned early on, and once you invoke 9/11 it becomes the elephant in the room. But we hear nothing much about it, nor see any of the effects of that event until near the end of the book when Tassie's brother, Robert, enlists in the army. However, he seems to enlist largely because he doesn't know what else to do with his life, not as a result of 9/11. The relationship between Tassie and Robert figures large at the end of the book, but no time is really taken to give us a true sense of the depth of that relationship. 9/11 is also tied in through a boyfriend who may or may not be a terrorist, but the only act of betrayal he commits is against Tassie. The fact of his political leanings is completely irrelevant and distracting. There are other distractions such as this. Her characters are interesting, but there are just too many of them. I was also disappointed in the very cliche depictions of the narrow-minded people in Tassie's hometown of Dellacrosse and the clueless liberals of Troy, where Tassie attends college. I'm from Illinois, and I live in a college town, and the broad strokes Ms. Moore uses to portray these populations is very old hat. She does much better with the individual characters and should have simply stuck to them. The attitudes of the country folk and the city slickers were, again, not really relevant to the story. Also irrelevant is the fact that the child Sarah and her husband Edward adopt is multi-racial. Much time is given to this aspect, but it does not have anything to do with what ultimately happens to Sarah, Edward and the daughter they choose to adopt, Mary-Emma. The only redeeming facet of this book is Moore's writing which is great fun to read. Moore also did create sufficient suspense around Sarah and Edward to make it worthwhile to see how that plot turned out. Overall, however, the book was a disappointment.