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

4.0

A Gate at the Stairs is narrated by a Midwestern farmer's daughter and begins the year she gets a job as a babysitter for an older couple who are about to adopt. Tassie is in college, rooming with a girl who has disappeared into her boyfriend's life, leaving Tassie alone and a little lonely and willing to fill her life with the family she babysits for and to fall for the friendly Brazilian guy in her Sufism class. Lorrie Moore can write. Which means what happens in the book is almost beside the point, what with all the words being put into the right places. She's skilled at creating atmosphere, at heading off into short diversions that circle back into the story later on and at capturing the feeling of being caught between trying to appear as experienced and prepared as possible while really not knowing what to do. Set at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, there's a feeling of uncertainty, of suspicion of the people around you and of a divided country going to war.

This book defies easy summarization, with its divergences and multiple threads of plot. Tassie's a naive, but intelligent observer, and takes her time with the story she's telling, which, being the story of a period of time in her life, is less straight-forward and plot-driven, than it is meandering and, like memory, hurrying through some experiences while slowing down to peer at other events in detail.