A review by runkefer
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

2.0

I listened to this as an audiobook, and that sometimes affects my experience of a book, but I was disappointed. I thought the college student's voice was inauthentic. There were constant random asides about things I didn't think a college student would care about. And too much word play and puns. There were also a number of anachronisms that kept throwing me out of the story. I didn't think the two main plots, about the nanny job and the brother going into the military, integrated well with each other. And what happened to the terrorist boyfriend? He just disappeared. What was his purpose in the story?

I know that often master short story writers, such as Lorrie Moore, don't translate well to longer works. I kind of feel like that happened in this book.