A Gate at the Stairs (Vintage Contemporaries) by Lorrie Moore (2010-08-24)

Gorgeous prose and a terrific main character are the highlights of "A Gate at the Stairs." There's little question Lorrie Moore is capable of sterling imagery and breathing life into fully-realized, three-dimensional characters. There's nothing cardboard or plain about Tassie Keltjin. You will remember her. Her 20-year-old voice, to me, is spot on. You spend the entire book inside her head, recalling events from the fall of 2001 as Tassie takes a job as a nanny, falls in and out of love and awakens to the real world of racism, terrorism and deceit. As Tassie concludes late in the book about literature: "The story itself had feet and a mouth, could walk and talk and speak of its own yearnings!"

I would caution that the energy level is low. The book is told in what I would call "casual past tense." It's reflective, told from a distance. I kept thinking tragedy would befall Tassie. It does. But the impact feels like a mild blow. Tassie's reaction at the funeral, her way of grappling with the grief, just seemed over the top to me. I didn't buy it. It's the climactic emotional scene and it's visually memorable (I'm not giving too much away) but it just didn't connect for me.

"A Gate at the Stairs" is episodic. Tassie recounts her evolving relationship with the parents (mostly the mother) of the child she watches, with the child herself, with a boyfriend and with longtime friend Murph. She's a college student, too, so we are given glimpses of the books she's reading and big-world ideas she's beginning to grasp. "Tragedies, I was coming to realize through my daily students in the humanities both in and out of the classroom, were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society, full of sorrow and truth but without moral function.

The feeling of the book, at times, is a laundry list of recollections. If the "plot" was as well connected as the character work, "A Gate at the Stairs" could have worked even better, at least for me.

"Are rabbits nocturnal?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Well, why do you see them in the day as well?"

My father was quiet for a long time. "They work in shifts," he said finally.

I love this extract from A Gate at the Stairs By Lorrie Moore, which I have just finished reading. It is a coming of age story, situated in the American Midwest. Tassie accepts a job as a nanny for the African-American adopted baby of a couple, whose dark past we slowly discover. The story is told from Tassie's point of view and tackles issues of racism, adoption, social differences and coming to terms with life, love and hate. The characters are all beautifully drawn and the story keeps getting better. But it is Moore's writing which makes the book a great read. Moore has a knack of choosing the right words, of expressing things in a visual, witty and emotional way. Pictures form before the reader's eyes. She also puts her characters in funny, yet also tragic, situations. I love the first meeting between Tassie, Sarah and the first birth mother: I was literally laughing when reading the scene. Moore's style is bright, clever and subtle. I will definitely be looking for more of her work.

There are, however, a few elements in the book that disappointed me. First I never really warmed up to Tassie, the main protagonist - I also wondered if she didn't speak a little too cleverly for who she was. I also found that the story gets sometimes bogged down - the middle of the book in particular is too slow. Some dialogues could definitely be cut down. Elements of the plot failed to convince me, such as when characters drop out of the story without clear reasons (the baby, Sarah, the brother...) Last, the writing is beautiful, yes, but ironically enough, sometimes too beautiful for its own good; it attracts too much attention and relegates the story to the background. In spite of these flaws, the book is a great read.

In 2001, Tassie Keltjin, a provincial daughter of a boutique potato farmer in the Midwest, attends college in Troy (modeled after Madison, Wisconsin), a liberal, (and often hypocritically liberal), bohemian, yuppified town of over-educated ironists. Here she develops her own notions about the middle-class, upper class, working-class, fighting-class, and college class, as well as a reality bite about racial divide and prejudice. She becomes a part-time nanny to a middle-age couple, Sarah and Edward, who are trying to adopt a baby.

Sarah is an eccentric restaurateur, a bird-like woman with the idiomatic foot-in-mouth syndrome who talks to everyone as if they were obtuse, and Edward is a haughty but enigmatic scientist. Tassie accompanies them through the whole process with the adoption agency, meeting the *birth mother* prospects (*a term, says Tassie, probably invented by adoption agencies), and finally taking home Mary for provisional adoption. Mary is a mixed-race toddler on the upper end of two-years-old--a comely, friendly, loving, bright-eyed baby who bonds with Tassie and her new family easily. If all goes well, the adoption will be sealed in six months. During these months, Tassie also falls in love for the first time, with a fellow student in her Intro to Sufism class.

Tassie tolerates Sarah and Edward because of her growing love for Mary (now Mary-Emma, now ME, now Emmie); eats their banana pudding baby food; and drinks their briary or woodsy wine when offered. On Wednesday nights, she listens a few flights down through the laundry chute as Sarah runs a support group for mostly Caucasian parents of mostly not Caucasian children. Tassie babysits the children and listens sporadically to the Greek chorus of voices downstairs:

"Racial blindness is a white idea." This would be Sarah
"How dare we think of ourselves as a social experiment?"
"How dare we not?"
"Diversity is a distraction."
"...Look, the whole agenda, like feminism, or affirmative action, is decorative. Without a restructuring of the class system, the whole diversity thing is a folly."
"The only black people you know went to Yale."
"Yeah, all the white people she knows went to Yale, as well."
"How dare we use our children to try and feel good about ourselves?"
"How dare we not?"

And etcetera. And when Tassie teaches Mary-Emma, "Been Working on the Railroad," Sarah responds with, "There's just two things I'm worried about with that: the grammar and the use of slave labor."

Tassie, who narrates the story, is a combination of naïve and knowing, of engaged and detached. Moore uses a deft duality of perspective--the story is being narrated linearly as if it just occurred, but from a distance, years later, circa 2009. Tassie's powers of observation are irresistible, acute, including her eye for the natural world.

She describes mosquitos:
"... with tiger-striped bodies and the feathery beards of an iris, their wings and legs the dun wisps of an unbarbered boy, their spindly legs the tendrils of an orchid, the blades of a gnomes sleigh."

The story also shifts spotlights during the last third of the story, as Tassie returns to the farm for some self-reflection and to heal from several losses and mishaps before returning to Troy.

This book could fail you if you require extrinsic, external verisimilitude of plot/storyline. That outer layer has some knobby-knots and a few surface craters. The plot points are held together with brush strokes rather than mortar. For instance, Tassie's boyfriend--his presence and his exit--demand a credulous or forgiving pardon. But it is the effect he has on Tassie that holds our attention. And if we are talking plausibility, Moore has it dead-on target when it comes to social observation and themes, which are her triumphs. She may have ironed out some wrinkles with a few bursts of steam, but honestly, I didn't care. Moore is probably in the top 10% of writers alive today. She has a Kafkaesque sense of the ticking of bureaucracy as seen in the sections with the adoption agency, and she has a Nabokovian ear for language, for words, for the very atom of words. If Mencken was a lyricist and could write like Iris Murdoch, he would be Lorrie Moore.

The accumulation of detail, of small matters and observations--those are the profundities of this story. It feeds the themes of loss, negligence, betrayal, and the force of memories. The pearl necklace given to Tassie by her mother becomes a "gyno-noose," for example. The reader becomes gradually inducted into this story of sweetness and doom, of arsenic and lace.

"Mordancy: there was something that could not really be taught. But it could be borrowed. It could be rubbed up against. It could scrape you like bark."

The pace is unhurried, requiring total absorption in the passages, in the sentences she constructs. If you skim or skip, you could miss a piercing observation tucked in a seemingly throwaway line. She accesses the soul with words; she illuminates the profane encroachments on people's lives, whether it is past mistakes haunting them or the present miscalculations of heart. And Tassie learns that grief can render you "passive, translucent, and demolished."

The gears of the plot, even when fumbled, are offset by Moore's wicked, lacerating, poetic, utterly human eye for the intrinsic. Her prose is vicious, vivid, scorching and candescent. She exposes the hollowness of some of the contemporary shibboleths and the hypocrisy of Troy's community. She executes this with rarified poignancy.

This is a novel you go along with for the sheer beauty of the writing, for the fierce presence of it. She is never derivative or cliché, not with her passages or her thematic wilderness, not where it counts. If you need a plot to stand on its own, skip this one. But for a penetrating view into the rudderless innocence that never was; to be caught off-guard like the songbirds in this story that stayed too late and froze when the snow began in earnest; to see the sacred through the profane; the malevolent in the noble; and to lose yourself in the irresistible power of language--this is why you read this book. Its literary muscle and harrowing commentary are unsurpassed.

The plot follows 20-year-old Tassie from her home in the midwest to her college, also in the midwest, in the couple years following 9/11 and the resulting "war on terror." A good chunk of the book focuses on Tassie's childcare job that begins even before the child arrives in the Brinks-Thornwood household, via adoption. She accompanies the adoptive mother (and father, when he can make it) to meet with various people - birth mom, foster family, adoption center personnel - on the way to bringing home Mary/Mary Emma/Emmie. From the start, she seems an integral part of the family dynamic, and a bit of a confidante to Sarah, the adoptive mom. Tricky territory for a young woman of twenty.

A theme that runs through this section is of racial identity and racism. Little Emmie is a biracial child, and when a jerk of a young guy yells out "the n-word" and Tassie reports this to Sarah, she immediately organizes a support group at her home for mixed race families in their small, liberal city, both adoptive and biological. I got a real kick out out of these Wednesday night sessions, which Tassie overhears while tending all the children upstairs. It's a running non-dialogue of almost every aspect of living in a transracial family, or I should say, a middle-class transracial family, as they all seem to be rather well-to-do, sipping wine and sampling Sarah's delicacies. Many funny and not-so-funny observations and quips, though there is no action taken or resolution found in these meetings.

A side story involves Tassie's relationship with a fellow student from college, Reynaldo. She loves him and declares it often, though it is one-sided. There is a minor plot point involving his taking pictures of Emmie that seems almost ominous, but actually goes nowhere. And another, potentially threatening plot turn with Reynaldo when a part of his character is revealed, but again, nothing really comes of it.

I guess this is where my slight dissatisfaction comes from, these pieces that seem important, but sputter out. Characters fall out of the novel completely once they have served their purpose, even characters central to the narrative and central, for most of this book, to Tassie's daily life. I waited in vain for some sort of reappearance. Perhaps, given the circumstances of the story, this kind of disappearance would make every bit of sense in real life, but I suppose I was wanting more from it as literature. Another thing is that this unfolds during the early days of our wars with Iraq and Afganistan. This fact flits in and out of the book only lightly. The bright, seemingly liberal family Tassie is involved with don't speak of it, and there is no mention of any campus protests until seven pages before the book ends, and only after there has been more personal repercussions from the war. It almost seemed inserted rather than organically part of the story.

But beyond that, the book is a pleasure to read. The writing is so, so good, and the Tassie and Sarah characters are particularly well-developed. This life-long New Englander got a good sense of what the midwest is like, how they speak and how they consider things, or at least through Tassie's eyes. The book explores themes of race, class, privilege, and parenthood, and looks at directionless youth (Tassie's brother joins the military to avoid going to truck-driving school, and even Tassie chooses mostly strange electives for her classes: wine tasting, war movie soundtracks, some kind of yoga class called The Neutral Pelvis). There is a harrowing backstory that changes things for the Brinks-Thornwoodfamily and Tassie in a huge way. And despite being a basically unlikeable person, I loved the Sarah character. She is a piece of work, a transplanted midwesterner with a back-East mindset and history. A smart, judgmental over-thinker, she owns a high-end restaurant. Here's a little gem, after she hears Tassie singing "I Been Working on the Railroad" with little Emmie. Sarah says, "There's just two things I'm worried about with that: the grammar and the use of slave labor [...] Correct subject-verb agreement is best when children are learning language, so be careful what you sing. It's an issue when raising kids of color. A simple grammatical matter can hold them back in life. Down the road. [...] We are pioneers. We are doing something important, unprecedented, and unbearably hard." Gotta love it! Oh Sarah, it only gets unbearably harder.

Lorrie Moore's books are often described as funny. I would choose a different word. Most writers tell a story, but Moore tells a wonderful, engaging story and also delights and surprises with passages that stop the reader because those passages have to be read again and savored. Oddly I don't find that her amazing twists of words and thought detract from the story at all.

"CONTENTS MAY SHIFT DURING THE FLIGHT, we have been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about the discontents? Would they please shift, too? ........Below us moved the continued squares of greens and brown that Rothko never got to."

Along with the delight and surprises, there is always the counterbalance of the deep sadness her stories convey. The characters are oh so real and often live with loneliness and sadness. This book is the full package.

Also, those of us who live in Madison,her hometown, find a bit of a biting, fun resemblance between Troy and where we live.

Some books leave you with a sad feeling - you are sorry to see the book end. Others leave you excited - you can't wait to read the author's next book. Or perhaps satisfied - you've read, you've learned, you've thought. This book left me simply exhausted. Relieved that it was finally over. Every bit of dialogue, sentence, thought, action, object is examined and analyzed throughout the entire book. I'm all for that in bits and pieces in a book - it's what often makes a good book. But this is WAY overdone. If anyone actually lived in their heads the way the characters (mostly unlikeable)in this book do, they would have to commit themselves to the loony bin forever. I know that if I had to listen to (I had the audio version) much more of this I certainly would have been committed. And the author's favorite technique seemed to be answering all thoughts/actions/objects with unanswers. As in: "This is a good book. Or was it? It could have been good. Or it might not have been." The entire book read like this! I stuck with it, hoping that it would turn out to be worth it. It wasn't. I am thankful that I opted to borrow this one from the library. I work to hard to spend my money on this. I'd give it one and a half stars.

If Garrison Keillor were edgier and less verbose, this would be the book of rich metaphors and dead-on human observations of Midwest life he would write. While many reviewers thought it was a depressing read, I loved being transported back to the existential angst of college life where your life's path was thrillingly and frighteningly unformed. Where your family's grip was loosening but also a safe (albeit often crazy) harbor. And where your understanding of the world and yourself expanded as you moved from a provincial town to a larger diverse city.

Without being heavy-handed, the big subjects are addressed: relationships, religion, racism, education, mental health, urban vs. rural life, terrorism, war, death, infidelity and the most interesting of all, gourmet cooking!

While these "slice of life" books about the less glamorous parts of the country can be tedious to read because the characters are deadly dull, every character in this book was fascinating and their observations often thought-provoking, funny and memorable. If you like Ann Patchett, Richard Ford or Anne Tyler, I bet you'll like this book.

Beautiful coming-of-age tale of a Wisconsin farm girl, who is exceptionally perceptive and lives in her head, over the course of a year in her wholly new environment of state college. First love and first death are evinced in engaging and, where warranted, as it often is in this account, heart-breaking detail. This being Moore's first novel in a long time, she throws in perhaps everything she's got, such as the narrator's relatively sophisticated musicality, the conundrums of inter-racial adoption, close observation of flora and fauna in the countryside, and, for that matter, truck farming, knowledgeable discussion of modern food, hilarious examination of Midwestern rural dialect, and the personal realities of post-9/11 in the heartland. I was delighted that the author so compelled this reviewer, a middle-aged New Yorker, to close attention to this sad heroine and her rather unfamiliar world.

I had heard excellent things about Lorrie Moore, but this is the first book I'd picked up by her. The praise she is given for her writing is not unmerited; her prose is stunning, and she manages to think up several brilliant metaphors where so many writers would have been unable to even come up with one.

Unfortunately, all her brilliant metaphors and descriptions were left in the book, and I was drowning in a sea of beautiful prose. I wish the book had been given more careful editing because I feel like it had plenty of potential. Yet the potential for a great plot felt unrealized, despite that the writing was lovely.

Tassie, the main character, has a main plotline as the nanny for Sarah and Edward. This plotline is engaging, and Sarah especially comes to life on the page. I was absolutely hooked into what was going to happen to her, and kept moving through the book for her alone. Yet Tassie has several subplots involving her family of origin, a roommate, and a boyfriend that seem pointless and are not interesting. I was not at all engaged with what was going to happen to anyone in Tassie's life beyond Sarah and Edward. And in fact, I was not even engaged in what was going to happen in Tassie's life.

There is really nothing at stake for Tassie in this novel, and although I don't think it was a terrible choice to put it in her point-of-view (her observations on Sarah and Edward are wonderful), it also made almost every scene where she is not engaged with Sarah and Edward boring. Nothing truly seems at stake for her in her family life, in her relationship with her roommate, or even in her relationship with her boyfriend.

Sarah, on the other hand, has so much at stake. She wants a family and is trying to navigate the maze of private adoption, and then you learn of she and Edward's past, and you feel even more hooked into her story. Sarah, not Tassie, is the star of the story, and if Moore wanted to put the story in Tassie point of view, she should have done so with careful editing to make it so that Tassie is sharing Sarah's story through her lens, not Tassie's story. There just isn't enough in Tassie's story to keep a reader engaged.

Wow! Wow. What a great book.

I started this book on audio, and finished it on paper. I let the mixed reviews turn me off, frankly, so I thought I'd give it a shot on audio and see what it was like without much investment. I LOVED the audio. And this is coming from a person who is not a big fan of audio.

The narrator did a terrific job, and the only times she bugged me was when she was doing baby voices. Otherwise, I thought she was great. What I felt was so perfect about the narration was that she had sort of that mid-westy nasally type of voice. I guess if that bugs you, or you don't like the narrator Tassie, then you'd be in trouble. But I'd recommend the audio.

The writing is terrific. Reviewers have stated that Moore was "trying to be funny" or "trying to be clever" ... For me, she succeeded in both of those things. Yes, there were a lot of metaphors. I loved them. The first part of the book was hilarious. Such remarkable observations, and so cleverly presented.

The novel definitely takes on a lot of topics, there's no question. There were parts that had I been reading them, I would have skimmed them (for those who have read the book, I'm referring to the Wednesday night meetings.) But aside from that, I was engaged.

It's social commentary, it's satire, it's witty observations, it's an emotional wallop. Moore made some interesting choices in the latter part of the book, and I admired the way she handled them. There was one thing I felt she sort of brushed past, but when I realized what was coming, I was grateful that she spared me.

I found this a worthy read and listen, and it is now my second favorite of 2010. I can see how it isn't for everybody, but don't let the bad reviews discourage you. If nothing else, give the audio a shot.

Bass-playing, 20 year old Tassie Keltjin is studying an eclectic range of subjects (Geology, British Literature, Sufism, Soundtracks to War Movies and Wine Tasting) in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American baby. A Gate at the Stairs is at times a very funny and at others sad reflection of growing up in modern America. The story is narrated from Tassie's perspective and her musings on life are beautifully captured ranging from her nascent thoughts on inter-racial relationships, to her own first love affair and ultimately to the War in Iraq and Afghanistan when her younger brother enlists. But this is not the dark humor of many books but a range of humor based on language, puns, misunderstandings and alienation. It is nevertheless "laugh out loud" funny in places - though inevitably some material doesn't quite reach these peaks. What seems to interest the author is the psychology of jokes from puerile to in-jokes to wisecracks.

Moore's style is that of free association, with the story branching out into tangential riffs that are initially appealing but over the course of a 300 page novel do at times seem wearing. I started off loving the book, felt less enthusiastic in the middle, only to be won back at the end. There are several passages where Tassie is upstairs (beyond the titular Gate at the Stairs) looking after Mary Emma and the other children of the attendees of Sarah Bink's weekly help groups for parents of mixed race children, when snippets of their conversations are heard by Tassie that become a bit tedious. Moore is far better at capturing Tassie's mysticism of the culinary efforts of Sarah's upmarket restaurant.

The story has a number of dark endings though and is truly moving at the end - particularly when describing what happens to Tassie's brother.

Moore has written several excellent short stories and it is tempting to suggest that the full novel is perhaps more difficult for her to sustain. In truth, this might have been an even more brilliant novella rather than a full novel, but the power of the story is certainly sufficient to sustain a full novel. And in Tassie Keltjin, she has created one of the most charismatic narrators that I have read for a long time - a sort of grown up Holden Caulfield. Ultimately the novel is a delicate mix of humor, tragedy and growing up in modern day America. Recommended.

I was excited at the start. Story looked interesting, and I wasn't exposed to any of the hype (which I learned about later - Really? it was one of the the store's Top 10 of 2009??!!). Early going, I noticed what a wonderfully talented author Moore is. Wow - maybe I've even found a new favorite! Soon, though, I realized I had to work to get anything out of this novel. The author writes densely, and one can tell she puts great effort (too much?) into each phrase and sentence. I really tried. I had to plod my way through, and finally could no longer endure - made it about 1/2 way. Generally, I don't review an item unless I've completed it - not fair if you haven't submitted to the full experience - but I'm commenting on the 1/2 and that I only could make it 1/2 way. I didn't enjoy her time with her family (what was the point - NOTHING happened), felt it a struggle to get anywhere during the birth mother/foster encounters, hoped her relationship with her employers would get interesting but it dragged, and realized things were probably not going to get much better if I was this far in and still waiting. Individually, they're well-drawn characters - but the plot's lacking and the writing's too complex for the story. I'm still curious to know about the boyfriend promised in the jacket blurb (seemed like a large element of the book judging from the blurb, but nowhere in sight 1/2 way in), whether 9/11 ever plays a part, if the couple's ever happy with their baby, Tassie's relationship with the child...but I don't have the time and effort to invest. A good book shouldn't be this much work! Or more accurately, this much work for this little payoff. I felt like I was squeezing non-juice oranges way past any hope of juice. I think I'm going to find someone who's read it, and have them give me the short version.

Lorrie Moore is a brilliant writer. Her prose, however, is almost like poetry... concentrated. There's so much going on in every single paragraph and I think that's why her short stories are better received. Reading pages upon pages of her prose is a project that has its rewards but can also begin to feel like a waste of time.

We follow Tassie, a sudden nanny to an adopted black child of a wealthy white couple, through a year of college. She finds and loses a boyfriend, watches her brother enlist in the army, takes a course on Soundtracks from War Movies, and falls in love with her small sittee. Moore really makes you know and understand and empathize with the character. Nothing is left to our imagination; we are privy to every one of Tassie's thoughts, relevant or irrelevant to what is happening around her. Reading the book is like living inside of someone else's head, wholly interesting and sometimes entertaining but utterly exhausting after a while.

It doesn't help that Moore tackles every heavy emotional issue a twenty-year old college student could possibly face: post 9/11 fears, grief and loss, shock, loneliness, death, awkwardness, heartbreak... the list goes on. The emotional rollercoaster doesn't truly get going until the second half of the book when one is too involved to jump off.

Moore is funny and her observations are biting, especially of the politically correct parents whose children she babysits during Wednesday night meetings about raising black children in a white world. However, some of the plotlines felt a little forced. There was a token gay character, a Muslim student who may or may not have been involved in terrorist activities, and a suspected affair that felt a little too "Nanny Diaries."

All in all, I wish I could write half as well Lorrie Moore. On the other hand, now that I'm finished with this book I feel drained and I know that I would never feel compelled to read it again.

tassie keltjin, born in dellacrosse, probably in illinois, brings to the university town of troy, her freshman year, a homespun wit and facility for jokes handed down to her from her tongue in cheek potato farmer father ( and mom is not too shabby herself, referring to their christmas tree as (she's jewish) `hanukkah hemlock') , which serve her well as student and more so as `childcare provider', babysitter/nanny for the adopted biracial daughter of scientist, edward thornwood, and his wife, sarah brink, owner/chef of a tony restaurant in troy.

when a racial slur is hurled at the small child, sarah forms a support group of parents of biracial children and white parents of adopted black children -- group gatherings on wednesdays, tassie upstairs with the children, the parents downstairs drinking wine and sharing experiences and anecdotes. there's one about the white couple who installed the security alarm system so their 13 year old black son could feel safe. the alarm goes off, the police arrive to the house, find the black youth inside, and before the boy, safe at home, can even think to mouth off with a `yo momma' the blast from a policeman's shotgun hits him in the chest.

this is novel filled with sententious statements, and placard slogans, fortune cookies, bumper sticker sayings, clichés and variations on clichés, song lines and wordplay, most of it tassie's mental chatter and observations. fortunately, she reads horace. her brother, back on the farm, is also picking up the habit of word play, while in school maintaining 4 f's with his d. when he graduates, there's the military waiting for him. meanwhile big sister's course load includes: intro to sufism, intro to wine tasting, and soundtracks to war movies. not all that irrelevant if she plans to, say, write a biography of francis ford coppola. nor is her tone irreverent for a young college student. and who has answers anyway, when life slams you with the unexpected instead of questions, and no one around you seems to have a clue as to what's right or relevant or what works or how to cope or react or respond? as narrator, she survived to tell the story of one of our moments in time.

An adoptive mother, I bought this book for Lorrie Moore's depiction of adoption. Her critique is severe and often wrong. But when she is even half right her blows hit hard. In A Gate at the Stairs, two institutions that should nurture the young, the university and adoption, leave them adrift. Readers can laugh at the comically trivial curriculum of Tassie Keltjin's midwestern university, but a fecklessly managed adoption brings grief that is not funny.

The adoption process depicted is highly improbable. The technical demand of the novel that Tassie, nanny to an adopting couple, should narrate the story, places her in meetings that would be private in a real adoption. Moore the satirist is the observer here. In the meetings no one questions the adopting couple, or appears to care for or to represent the child (or the birth mother), or notes the indifference of the adopting father, or the chill between the adopters.

Workers at the "Adoption Option" agency are callous. The director, a lawyer, dismisses the religious wishes of the birth mother as "Unenforceable, of course." The foster mother who works with the agency dresses the adoptable child in outgrown clothes, parks her in front of a TV, and passes care-giving to her own teen-aged daughter. She also disparages the birth mother to the adopting mother.

How could such behavior exist (if it does)? Moore gives a satirist's answer: because of lies and greed. The adopting parents cannot pass muster. They are hiding their identities because of past negligence. Why does the slackness of the agency allow them to hide their past? Out of greed: the adoption costs more than $18,000. Improbably but still tellingly, Moore makes use of the unpleasant adoptive father-to-be to voice a diatribe against for-profit adoption. Silent on matters of affection, he rails to Tassie about how money is managed in the adoption. He and his wife will disburse a large sum to the lawyer who arranges the adoption, he explains, while by law they may give only a small gift to the birth mother, a poorly paid hospital worker. Birth mothers, he explains, are "only allowed to receive tokens, like a watch. Nothing real, like a car. The nothing-but-a-watch law is considered progressive, since babies must not be sold, or exchanged for cars. And so they are exchanged for watches." In this way, he says, the "middlemen get richer and richer and the birth mother continues to empty bedpans while wearing her new wrist watch."

Moore's novel is a parade of horribles. But good satirist that she is, she writes from a solid moral base. Consider this report in the August 2010 issue of Adoptive Families: "domestic adoption costs range from less than $10,000 to more than $40,000, with the majority costing between $20,000 and $30,000."

please forgive me for omitting a star. Even though I'm convinced that this novel will loom large in my readerly imagination--like all great novels do (BELOVED, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, COLD MOUNTAIN)--I can only keep it there if I squint. I squint in order to blur the flaws, and I have to squint pretty hard. You know what I mean. I handed the novel to a friend this week--raving, insane, overcaffeinated--but I had to temper my excitement by warning her about at least two major hurdles, two scenes in the novel that are so unbelievably, glaringly...wrong...that I didn't want her to think my rave review of the book as a whole had anything to do with those sections. I still love you, Lorrie.

If you've read the novel, dear browser, you know what I mean: the final THREE overheard discussions at Tassie's employer's interracial baby group and, even worse, the confrontation scene between Tassie and her "boyfriend." Maybe one of Lorrie Moore's graduate students--or undergraduates?--slipped those pages in? Maybe her editor was dating a terrorist and just skipped those pages? Whatever happened, I'll just squint my eyes and focus on the rest of the novel, and there's so much there that's great. I think the last 50 pages make up, perhaps, one of the most satisfiying endings to a novel I've ever read. Even the highly dramatic funeral scene was believable and heartbreaking. I'll never forget those scenes of Tassie riding through the farms dressed as a bird.

So read it, if you haven't. Read it all the way to the end. And then forgot about those little missteps.

I hate "deep, dark, buried secret" fiction, drama, film, television shows, etc. This book is one of those and the specific deep, dark, buried secret in this novel is one of the most cliched subgenres in that tedious genre. The other main plot line - falling in love and finding out your lover is not what he seems to be - is a little more imaginative but this specific version is a little far fetched.

All that said, I really enjoyed reading this book. Why? The writing is magical. Absolutely outstanding. as each page turned I was more willing to overlook the creaks and absurdities of plot and just be swept along by the prose. It's hard to find a book that has more precisely tuned observations of people's follies; and the metaphors have all the imaginativeness that the plots lack. So at the end of the day, I definitely recommend it.

The writing is exceptional, but it is not the most ambitious novel. The protagonist, Tassie, has been done before, and is more observer than evolving character, although she does become more worldly. Moore does not really get into the mind of a terrorist, as Gore Vidal attempted to do; I felt Sara's anxiety in the wonderful adoption scenes, but later I viewed her anguish with some emotional detachment. Like Tassie, I felt more anguish over Mary.

Some of Moore's analogies are so odd they are humorous, and I am not sure Moore feels differently: "I could feel the semester winding itself up as if with the hand crank of a Gatling gun ...". Other writing is just exceptional. "I lay there , fretful as a Bartok quartet". "The prairie ...could not hang on to spring. It was as if there were not enough branches to grip it, hills to hold it .... "

The author tells of a young girl, Tassie Keltjin, who has lived all her life in a small farming town. Her father is a potato farmer who has earned a reputation for his potatoes especially among restaurant owners. She comes as a student to a university town where she finds employment with a couple who hire her to be a nanny to an adopted interracial child, an adorable little girl who is two years old. She has a brief love affair with a fellow student who is not who he represents himself to be and ends when he suddenly leaves. She is at first devastated by this but other sad events in her life take precedent.
I found the book interesting, well written, but a trifle wordy in spots. It showed that despite equal rights legislation and so-called political correctness, there still exists a great deal of racial biases which can be overwhelming, particularly to young children. Alma Winters, Author-Once Upon a Time Tales

This book was my introduction to Lorrie Moore -- an author I had heard good things about from my book club. But I had to slog through the beginning of the book's dense paragraphs and wistful meanderings of Tassie Keltjin, a young college girl from a farming community, before arriving at what I considered the heart of the novel -- Tassie's employment as a nanny for a secretive, unpredictable couple who were in the process of adopting a bi-racial child. As an adoptive parent myself, whose son is "racially other" from my husband and me, I was drawn into Moore's representation of the very real racism that still exists in spite of the encircling denials by those with no experience in this kind of racial subterfuge. Then suddenly those characters, especially Sarah and Emmie, were snatched away from me. And nothing but more ramblings from Tassie replaced their disappearance. I could never identify with Tassie's emotional struggles, and I could not make her brief descent into that coffin even vaguely sound logical or reasonable...or real. Sadly, I found myself skimming rapidly through the rest of the book, and will need some convincing now to pick up another novel written by Ms. Moore.

I am apparently incapable of writing a review without spoilers, so if you haven't read this book, please don't read further.

The title and the cover illustration of this book made me think of Jacob's Ladder - the ladder, seen by Jacob in a dream, which reached to the heavens. After envisioning the ladder filled with angels, Jacob awoke and said, ""This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

Directly after the terrible events of 9/11, one of my primary feelings was surprise - surprise that the rest of the United States and the world actually cared about what had happened in New York City. In my insular shock, I had thought of the tragedy as one that belonged to New Yorkers alone. How wrong I was.

In A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore, among other things, explores how the trauma of 9/11 casts a shadow even in a small Midwestern college town, and upon a kind, dreamy student named Tassie. Moore paints her story with watercolors, not oils. Tassie, like so many young people, drifts her way into first the petty plot points and then the sorrows that mark her life. Tassie is muted in her reactions and not particularly self-aware, which may be a blessing in part for her, as it softens her grief. She is kind, though, and funny, and she learns.

Lorrie's characterization is an imperfect success. Sometimes I fully bought Tassie, other times it seemed to me Moore was putting clever, authorly words into her mouth. She drifts in and out of Muslim practice with little impact or explanation. Tassie's life at school seems colorless, and the scenes set on the farm never fully resonate. This revelation of Reynaldo's identity seemed a bit odd and awkward.

I did appreciate how some characters made a strong impression and never reappeared. Others, like Tassie's mother, were pitiful and cruel in their strangeness, yet receded into the background. Tassie's brother seemingly fell into this category until the events towards the end of the book. I thought brittle Sarah Brink was particularly well drawn - so tightly would, so unhappy, yet so tender to her tiny potatoes. And this is not a fairytale. Mary-Emma does not show up at the playground for one final farewell. The child herself is appealing (great vocabulary, though perhaps that's necessary in a nonvisual medium.)

This book did make me think. We all grow up with tragedies - an unloving parent, the death of a beloved friend or teacher, a bully at school, a broken heart. Many of us are unfortunate enough to experience our own personal horrors that are as devastating, to us, as the September 11th attacks. Who ever really is the same after the death or permanent loss of a child or a partner or a sibling? Moore shows some possible results through the lives of her characters. Some cut and run, like the Brinks. Some are fully broken. And some grow stronger, like Moore's Tassie.

There will always be those we have loved and lost and who we will never see or hold again in this lifetime. What's gone is gone. But we can whisper to them, maybe even get a glimpse of them, through that gate at the stairs.

As I said, this book is not perfect, but for me it was though-provoking, and that is enough for me to round my 4.5 stars up to a 5.

A 322-page Life Lesson book -- similar style of "The Goldfinch."

Writes Lori Moore: "We loved our lives more than we ever knew, and at the end felt the bounty of them ...more than we had realized during the living of them." This sums up what I took away from Ms. Moore's masterpiece. A fantastic book.

This book has been lauded as Lorrie Moore's masterpiece, and with good cause. It will certainly be worthy of study for years to come. The rich, evocative language, the mordant wit, the keen observations of both small-town Wisconsin and the the life around Madison, the goofy humor....the only problem is that it kind of drags a bit if you just want a nice read. The lengthy summer-at-home interlude, which feels rather like a coda after the climax of the late spring's events, replete with numerous references to wild plants someone not from the Midwest might not be familiar with, kind of lets the air out...it's as if the acts got mixed up, and the fourth act came as the second act. It feels like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek meets The Good Mother, at times. You are enjoying the poetry and anthropology and natural history, but are kind of interested in getting back the plot.

That said, the book brilliantly captures the passive, yet crazy existence of many college students, the confusion of the middle-aged adoptive mom--a hard-boiled restaurateur, the posturing of the upper-middle class, politically-correct parents of mixed race children who meet every Wednesday night, even the subtle sleaze of the serial philanderer (the book's final lines are worth sticking around for!).

There's a lot of truth in this book.

A beautifully written book about the heartache of becoming an adult, religion, death, race in America, the difference between Midwesterners and people from the East Coast, shallow liberalism and mindless conservatism, sex, and every other important thing you can think about. Young Tassie Kelttjin, the daughter of a farmer who supplies pricy potatoes to pricier restaurants, takes a babysitting job for a couple who she quickly comes to find has yet no actual baby. They finally adopt a two-year-old African-American girl whose white mother has a checkered past. Things only get stranger for Tassie from there, including the revelations of the couple's past and her complicated romance with a supposedly Portuguese man with a stunning surprise.

Moore's writing is both lyrical and honest. I found myself nodding several times at the truth of her observations, particularly the blind spots that all of us have, as well as the beauty of her writing. A good recommendation for book club reads as well as a solitary day - you'll want to finish this one as soon as you start reading.

For a novel that received such rave reviews, I was expecting to be knocked out by the story, the theme, the writing, the characters--SOMETHING.

Instead, there was some great to terrific writing, many dead spaces that went nowhere because the characters were--oddly--not very robust for such a character-driven novel.

This is a sad novel, sort of a gray winter's day story that doesn't really give you any "a-ha" moments and the characters don't really grow of change. They sort of keep on, keeping on, and while there are some universal themes explored--family, relationships, truth, honor, etc--nothing really resonates.

Instead, try Wallace Steger's CROSSING TO SAFETY or John Irving's A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.

As this novel opens, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin has recently moved from her parent's farm in the rural Midwest to a moderately-sized college town. Her first round of exams behind her, she decides to try to find a job to help pay her way. Figuring the ideal gig would be a nanny position -- flexible hours, nap time equals study time, etc. -- she works her way to the door of Sarah and Edward Brink, a middle-aged couple who, oddly enough, do not have any children. As it turns out, though, they are planning to adopt soon, and because they are both busy professionals, they wanted to make sure they had a nanny lined up in advance. It's a move, Tassie realizes a few weeks in, that is very telling in terms of Sarah's nature: cautious, measured, prepared, and all that tidiness calculated to hide something -- some personality trait -- that starts to feel kind of "off" to Tassie later on.

Yet despite the fact she finds Sarah a bit weird and Edward strangely aloof, Tassie takes the job and even joins the couple as they begin to interview birth mothers. Eventually, Sarah and Edward adopt a mixed-race little girl they name Mary-Emma, and Tassie's adventures into nannydom -- and into the increasingly troubled (and troubling) Brink family -- begin for real.

Though I enjoyed this novel for the most part, especially the sections about adoption and the almost comic social politics involved in being a wealthy white couple with a mixed-race child, I had the same problems with it I often have with Moore's writing, problems here amplified by the fact this is a novel instead of her usual short story. Moore's style -- a meanderingness punctuated by wordplay I sometimes find awkwardly placed and jarring -- works pretty well here as the voice of a 20 year-old farm girl. But even thinking about it in those terms -- the terms of a realistically drawn 20 year-old voice, I mean -- didn't change the fact it still struck me as not being quite as sharply written as it needed to be.

As usual, Moore turns incredible phrases frequently -- when she's on, she's easily one of the best writers I've encountered in the last few years, my god -- but those moments of gape-inducing awesomeness were often dampened by frequent tangents that played little role besides, it seemed to me, that of supporting Moore's desire to be as witty as possible.

And don't even get me started with the whole terrorist-boyfriend subplot: so unnecessary and so awkwardly done. I could tell what Moore's goal was, given the story's setting (about a year post-9/11), but she didn't come even close to nailing it. A good editor, in my opinion, would've chopped that whole chunk out, and, frankly, tightened this novel up into a novella instead.

I want to repeat that I think Moore is a mind-blowingly talented writer, and if you've never read any of her short fiction, you should stop reading this review right now and go dig some up. But I think she's a much stronger writer when she's writing under space constraints. Somehow, this novel ended up feeling both overwritten AND underwritten to me. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but by the end I was ready to be done. Never a good sign.

There are few books that have provoked in me such simultaneous emotions as this one has. Several times I rolled my eyes, a few times I wanted to throw the book across the room in exasperation, and once I put it back on the shelf deciding that a re-run of some mind numbing sitcom would be more adequate entertainment. Not of course that a book need be entertainment, but A Gate at the Stairs, certainly wavers between entertaining and tormenting.
Moore is aces when it comes to words. Exhausting when it comes to metaphors, but sometimes brilliant when it comes to insight. I wanted to turn her brain waves down a notch or two so I could savour the brilliance and toss out the excess. It is distracting and terribly hard to concentrate on a book that has you underlining sentences on one page with the intention of having them etched in stone over your mantlepiece and then a paragraph later finding yourself embarrassed that your reading such pretentiousness and hiding your pen in the seat cushions lest someone see your naivete.
The story itself works wonderfully for stretches than veers wildly away from what it seems to have set out to accomplish, and then stumbles rather unwillingly back into narrative territoty, only to dissipate again into some nebulous poeticism. It's overthought but underbaked. That being said it has moments of beauty that are almost untouchable in contemporary writing. No wonder she's heralded as such a great short story writer.
I itched to just put the book down for good 250 pages in, but then Tassie went home to the farm. At last all that messy, tedious, precociousness of a book coalesced into something finally larger than life and the words were suddenly, crazily inventive AND sensible, the metaphors wildly creative AND emotionally honest and thematically constructive. By the end I felt a little like Tassie must have felt running through her Father's fields dressed as a bird, that somehow despite the absurdity and initial embarrassment, I was wonderfully free and almost able to fly.

Seventy-five people have already reviewed this book and many have said what I felt while reading it: too "precious" (ironically so from one who felt the need to stick her nose up about color names: Puce; Pottery: Pomegranete, et al and "restaurantese"). Guess we all have our arenas where we can be pretentious. Lorrie Moore's appears to be the modern novel.

That said, and others have said it, so..........I had more of a problem with the idea of a writer born in the 1950's writing a memoir set post-9/11 as a college student. It just didn't work. Too many "off" notes: never flown in a plane? yet the child of parents who honeymooned in England? little or no conversation w/ her roommates, employers, family, about the events of 9/11, even though they had just occurred? doubtful, especially on a college campus as sophisticated and Eastern-oriented as Madison (the "Troy" of the novel). The Starbuck's
story is an urban legend rather than something that Tassie alone would have experienced. All of the music & movie references were dated and not those a twenty-first century college student would make, even one from rural Wisconsin (in fact, it seemed very condescending that Tassie would be so un-hip). Perhaps this is a geographic (NY vs Wisconsin) issue. I didn't even feel the adoption details were accurate for the time. And how could she be so unbelieveably naive about "Reynaldo"?
The conversational snippets (although overused) from the
Wednesday Night African-American Child Raisig Nights
sounded
dead-on: probably
Moore has actually heard these opinions voiced
frequently among her academic circle.

She succeeded brilliantly in conveying her love for Mary-Emma and her devastation over her brother's death in Afghanistan in spite of lack of back-story re the latter.
Both Mary-Emma and "Bo", the drop-out gourmet vegetable farmer/father were compelling characters.

I have owned "Birds of America" for about ten years and have yet to read it. I will now and hope that the short story form suits Ms. Mooore better.

For some reason, not one of my English Profs. ever mentioned L. Moore. This is a mystery since L. Moore is one of America's most intelligent writers. This novel is a little bit like the french cuissine served at Sarah's restaurant; nutty, flavorful and at times ascerbic. The adoption plot could have taken any number of turns, and for a brief moment seemed to stop and linger in the hallway while the adults acted out a Zadie Smith comedy, nothing doing as Emmie suddenly...just read to find out. Very many sub plots take a turn around the room. Gunny's is very sad and opens into a pastoral hymn by Tassie and her father. This novel so aptly displays L. Moore's grace, humor and truth, yes, she is always a realist, which can be a hard read at times. Though the cold gets into the bones, there is at least a semblance of Spring, the sometimes unwanted notion, that life does still go on. Brilliantly written, this novel stands next to Franzen's Freedom effortlessly an equal.

Lorrie Moore is a wonderful writer. I've read her short stories and love them. But this novel, A Gate at the Stairs, I did not love.
Tassie Keltjin is a student at a mid-western college in need of a job. She signs on as a nanny for a middle-aged couple who adopt a biracial child. The relationship between Tassie and little Emmie is delightful, and Moore does a great job depicting the insidiousness of racial bias. But the past life of the adoptive parents intrudes, and all goes downhill.
One of the first rules of fiction is that it must be believable. Moore, a writer of the highest caliber, violates this rule.
No mother would ever allow her husband to put their four-year-old son out of the car beside a busy interstate because the kid was kicking the seat. And if there were such a mother, or father, and if the four-year-old should walk into traffic and be killed, surely such terrible parents would go to jail for the rest of their lives. They could not simply change their identities and move on to become a highly respected scientist searching for a cure for cancer and the owner of a successful gourmet restaurant.
No sane person would ever climb into a coffin with someone who had been dead for several weeks, close the lid, and ride from the church to the cemetery inside that coffin with that putrescent body.
Sadly, this book is filled with things that are simply not unbelievable. The Brazilian lover suddenly turns terrorist, cleans out his apartment, and disappears. The restaurateur mixes up a batch of unknown ingredients and has Tassie put them in her frig with orders not to eat it. There is no explanation for this odd behavior.
Tassie goes on such wild, rambling, flights of imagination one wonders about her sanity.
This book, and the things that happen, do not meet the test of believability. I should have put it down long before I got to that funeral scene.

This book is both the most beautifully written AND the most carefully crafted book that I have read in over two decades. By saying that the book is well crafted, I mean that every single word was carefully chosen. I also maintain that this book deserves at least two readings so that readers can understand this book in the many layers in which it is written. The book is also outrageously funny, as the author plays with both her words and with her audience.

This book is especially suited to book groups, to discuss the many symbols and themes that are presented.

There is an over-arching plot, told in the first-person, in which Tassie (our narrator and protagonist) accepts a part-time job as a childcare worker while she attends college. The mid-western college town- Troy- is home to a couple (Sarah Brink and Edward Thornwood) that wishes to adopt a baby. Sarah owns an upscale, organic restaurant and Edward is a scientific researcher of some type, so they need someone to watch their baby-to-be while the two of them work. They hire Tassie to go through the adoption process with them. The three of them were to meet in Green Bay, and go to the adoption agency together. Sarah and Tassie's plane landed, but Edward (whose plane landed one half-hour earlier) was no-where to be found. The reader is introduced to Edward as he belatedly wanders into the adoption office: Strike one for Edward! Instead of being angry at Edward's lateness, Sarah looked happier than Tassie had seen. "Something in her face softened and relaxed, and a youthful light went on behind every part of it. Despite everything, she was in love with him...it was hard for my Midwestern mind to imagine being in love with a guy this flamboyantly self involved...".Tassie appraises him as he apologizes and sips his coffee, "...and I could see he was showing us himself, his aquiline profile, his handsome objectness, so that for a minute he did not have to trouble himself to admire us but to soak up our appreciation of him...one could see it his habit to almost imperceptively dominate and insult." Strike two. Another glimpse of the couple's chasm comes when they split the adoption fee - separately, 50-50, perhaps another strike? "Edward and I are splitting this down the middle...We like things to be even between us".

The couple (and Tassie) return home with a beautiful biracial child named Mary-Emma, or `Emmie', who is between one and two years old.

Lorrie Moore uses words lyrically, and comically, but with a deeper symbolism. When asked about her parents, Tassie replies, "...they're quasi retired." She continues: "I loved to say quasi. I was saying it a lot now, instead of sort of, or kind of, and it had become a tic." Tassie gives more examples: "I am quasi ready to go," I would announce Or, "I'm feeling a bit quasi today." Murph called me Quasimodo. Or Kami-quasi. Or wild and quasi girl."

The story furthers the examples of 'quasi-ness", of the quasi marriage of Sarah and Edward, the quasi adoption period of only six months, or the quasi racial status of baby Emmie. The quasi relationship is explored, of Tessie and her first love who, sadly is, also her first heartbreak.

And so begins the story of life behind the "GATE", writ large, "at the stairs", the gate that protects the baby, the gate that separates Tassie and baby Mary-Emma from the couple, the gate that is the chasm itself between Edward and Sarah, and ultimately, the gate behind a history that Sarah and Edward would have preferred to have left behind.

"Did you take off for Heaven
And leave me behind?
Darlin', I'd join you
If you didn't mind.

I'd climb up that staircase past lions and bears,
But it's locked
At the foot of the stairs.

Are you paradise
With someone who cares?
Oh, throw down the key to the stairs.

One can see shining steps
And think love is enough,
Then sit at the bottom and wait.
The climb up to sweetness needs more than my love:
Darlin', please just open the gate...

Can someone open the gate?"

This book is really an absolute pleasure to read. The power of Moore's prose is breath- taking; the words actually glisten. The story is compelling, there are laugh-out-loud phrases, and profound questions that the author poses, but sometimes in the form of jokes, or, as Tassie would say, "quasi-" jokes.

I was unaware that Lorrie Moore was known for her short stories, but she should stick to them. "A Gate at the Stairs" would have made a decent short story. Some of the problems include incredible overuse of similes--one in virtually every sentence to drag the narrative out; story lines that are unbelievable and just peter out; and characters that are totally unrealistic. Having lived in "Troy," obviously Madison, Wisconsin, I must wonder why she feels such animosity towards the place where she lives and works. It's not my favorite, but it is not without its merits, yet she dwells on the obvious--the harsh winters--and feels she has to denigrate the residents, to what avail? I simply cannot understand why she changes the names of some towns and not others, e.g., Green Bay by name, and with very elitist overtones. If she ever read a good Japanese novel, she would understand the evocative role that real place names play. Even a less clever writer, Pat Conroy, understands that.

I bought this book on the strength of the reviews and because the few pages available online read quite promising, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. To begin with the positive, there are some well written scenes and insightful descriptions (for example contrasting the female expectation of male sexuality with the female perception of its reality), but the story simply does not fit together - the book feels like there are three or four short stories mixed together without much of a connection among them except for the narrator. There are many downright boring passages that one is tempted to skip over, and the worst are the dozens of pages with disjointed bits of conversation among a group of exceptionally stupid and conceited adults that the narrator overhears while babysitting - this is just so cliché-ridden, dumb and boring one wonders what the author was thinking; one tenth of this load of rubbish would have been more than enough to make her point. Definitely not recommended.

I bought this book on the strength of the reviews and because the few pages available online read quite promising, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. To begin with the positive, there are some well written scenes and insightful descriptions (for example contrasting the female expectation of male sexuality with the female perception of its reality), but the story simply does not fit together - the book feels like there are three or four short stories mixed together without much of a connection among them except for the narrator. There are many downright boring passages that one is tempted to skip over, and the worst are the dozens of pages with disjointed bits of conversation among a group of exceptionally stupid and conceited adults that the narrator overhears while babysitting - this is just so cliché-ridden, dumb and boring one wonders what the author was thinking; one tenth of this load of rubbish would have been more than enough to make her point. Definitely not recommended.

I think I read this once and found it impenetrable, and then I picked it up at a book sale and read it again. Without the fog of newness, the veils started to fall away. This isn't the kind of book I normally enjoy -- the characters are inscrutable and the plot is frustrating, and yet I'm putting this on the nightstand for my husband, who thoroughly enjoys an unwieldy scene. I'm glad I gave it a second chance because the characters keep popping into my head. Well worth a first and second read.

In the Midwest in September 2001, twenty years old Tassie Keltjin, daughter of a gentleman potato farmer, is at college looking forward to the greats of literature. In between her semesters, she takes a position as a nanny to restaurateur Sarah Brink, who has no children yet but is considering adoption.

Sarah begins her search for a suitable pregnant woman who does not want to raise a child or have an abortion. She has a choice between a girl without a brain or a white female whose African-American boyfriend dumped her when she mentioned the "P" word. Meanwhile Tassie receives an education on social class and race relationships while finding a lover Reynaldo, who conceals from her elements of his life.

This is a terrific character study of a a young woman just after 9/11 trying to make sense of a world that seems out of control from her relative understanding. Tassie makes the story line as the center holding it together with her wonderful mix of gentle naivety and Midwestern potato wisdom. Fans will enjoy her escapades with 9/11 in the backdrop as Lorrie Moore explores the issues that split society through her intelligent yet bewildered protagonist coming of age.

Harriet Klausner

Lorrie Moore writes about the life a Tassie, a college student who moves through life's trials from being a lost teenager to being a young adult. This is, at its base, a coming-of-age story, like so many others on the market. What distinguishes A Gate at the Stairs is the writing. At its better points, it is captivating and magical. At its worst it is tedious and barely skimable. It reads much like an unpolished Anne Tyler novel. The story is good, filled with humor and deep sadness, but the writing is too inconsistent to make the read entirely enjoyable.

Having not read Moore before, but aware of her reputation and the good reviews given this book, I was looking forward to something special. The first 40 or so pages are promising, as Moore establishes Tassie's character and flair for downbeat irony through the use of interior monologue. Then Sarah, one of the most tedious secondary characters in fiction, is introduced, Tassie goes home for an endless Christmas vacation with her family, and the novel goes into a boredom dive from which it never recovers. We never see the Tassie we originally encountered again, Sarah's penchant for mundane verbiage sets the tone for the entire book, and the characters are lost in an avalanche of blander-than-oatmeal prose. No action can occur without the author describing it in exhaustive boilerplate, using it as a platform for irrelevant speculation and sophomoric stabs at humor, or saddling Tassie with unbelievably dull observations regarding it. One example: when flying with Sarah for a prospective adoption, Tassie's interior monologue reads, "Contents may shift during flight, we had been told. Would that be good or bad? What about the discontents? Would they please shift, too? . . . " and on and on. It was hard for me to believe that anyone as bright as Tassie, who mere sentences later compares the landscape below her to an unfinished Rothko, would occupy her thoughts with such drivel. On one hand we're to believe she's a naive farm girl on her first flight, unable to tell by context or common sense whether shifting contents in the overheard is a good thing or bad thing. On the other hand, though raised on a potato farm, she's not only familiar with Rothko but, in need of a metaphor, he's the first thing that comes to mind. I got the feeling that the real point of the paragraph wasn't to advance the story of bring us closer to Tassie but to t-up the author's pun on contents and discontents. How is this good writing?
In the interests of full disclosure, I did not finish this book but quit somewhere in the middle, when the author's presumption that any random association that popped into her head, along with labored and un-clever puns, should be put down on paper became so consistently annoying it undermined any interest in reading on.

I could have forgiven this novel many faults - too many quirky details, first-person narration too clever for its own good, over-the-top plot points, an unfunny bit about the narrator making chocolate milk with a vibrator (why?) - if I only knew at the end of the novel what, if anything, young Tassie had learned from her experiences.

I am giving the book three stars because there are some very lovely descriptive passages, and some very memorable scenes and characters.

The plot, without too many spoilers, is as follows: college-student Tassie is a sheltered Midwestern girl with a knack for describing the world around her in sarcastic inner monologues. She gets a job as an au pair for a white couple adopting a biracial baby, and deals with the tensions between herself and her employers, the tensions within the adoptive family itself, the latent racism in the community, and her own growing attachment to the child. Meanwhile, she falls in love for the first time, and the events of 9-11 and its aftermath begin to creep into the story.

From beginning to end, Tassie's narration is a little too glib for my taste. After a series of terrible (and not completely believable) events, and at the very end of the book, I expected to see more growth in the main character or some reason why any of it mattered. The novel seemed to simply dissolve at the end.

Like many here, I've enjoyed several of Lorrie Moore's short stories, but this novel was a massive disappointment.

After a hundred pages I was ready to give up on the novel, but I have a compulsion to finish what I start, so I kept going. And the novel did improve - there is a good story here. There are also poignant scenes, interesting insights, and lovely descriptive passages.

But Ms. Moore is far too enamored of her own sense of humor. She writes like someone who is so used to being told she's funny that every joke she thinks of merits inclusion. Most don't. They read like monologues Seinfeld would have rejected for being too lame. "What's the deal with those 'how to please your man' articles in women's magazines? Did the Ottoman Empire have anything to do with living room furniture? Oh, and don't you hate it when people overuse acronyms?" Imagine taking a slightly amusing one liner and milking it for three pages - that's the majority of this novel. Maybe she needed an editor with more backbone to tell her to tone it down.

It's too bad, because Ms. Moore is a skillful writer and this could have been a really good novel...but it isn't.

If one were to diagram the reviews left by the store readers, revealed would be a near perfect bell curve. 35 Five Stars, 44 Four Stars, 28 Three Stars, 42 Two Stars, and 33 1 Star.

I fear those who trend towards the 3, 2 and 1 stars like their fiction like my grandfather likes his tea: transparent, easy to digest, and virtually stimulant free. "A Gate at the Stairs" is a potent concoction. The reader must be active, alert, and girded.

I let my guard down during towards the end--and I actually stopped breathing for several seconds while reading one of the most heart wrenching passages I have ever encountered in literature. (I will not give the scene away, you will know it when you get there.)

I know literary fiction is more about character development than fast-paced action, and I enjoy good/quirky descriptive writing, but this book should have been edited down by 1/3 or more. Moore never uses only one or two sentences about what's going on in Tassie's head when 4-5 paragraphs will do. As a result, the vast bulk of this book is a highy metaphorical description of Tassie's environment, with not enough space left to watch her character respond to that environment.

Tassie bonds with her charge, Mary-Emma, and then watches her being wrenched from her adoptive mother's arms, never to be seen again. The reader waits to hear something, anything, about what efforts Tassie makes to reconnect with Emmie or even Sarah. Nothing happens except that Tassie ends up eating at Sarah's restaurant, by herself, on the last night it's open. Even then, she does not ask where Sarah is. The reader watches her order and consume vast quantities of expensive food, thinking "uh-oh, this kid is going to be in trouble when the bill comes." But, no, the only drama connected with this event is that it forces Tassie to ride home in a rain storm.

Once home, the book dissolves into so many stream-of-consciousness metaphors about Tassie's summer that I started skimming -- something I almost never do, especially when 80% into the novel. I just couldn't take any more of the quirky descriptions. Moore confuses and conflates blacktop, macadam and concrete when describing a disused tennis court. Why not show some mercy on the reader by just choosing a surface and sticking with it? These unedited mistakes made it hard to picture the setting she was trying to create. Likewise, she refers several times to a "fish hatchery" which, upon more detailed description, appears to be nothing more than a deep pool in a local stream -- not the meaning of the term to most readers. As a country girl myself, with a more than passing familiarity with Midwestern US flora and fauna, I was flummoxed by Moore's inconsistent and unreliable descriptions of Tassie's home. She got some of it very right, only to contradict herself a sentence later.

A good editor would have worked with Moore to separate the dross of all those mental asides from the gold of Tassie's character. Instead, we are left with a novel that seems to be trying to hard to impress the reader with Moore's knowledge of Midwestern minutiae, and her ability to create metaphors for virtually everything. The resulting novel reads like something Tassie might have written: a 20-year old trying to be clever and to impress her audience, rather than a mature novelist painting a picture with deft strokes.

Awful. Checked this out based on great critical reviews but it was a chore to get through two chapters. Maybe it gets better but judging from most of the other reviews here, it doesn't. Clearly a novel written for the sake of writing a novel, not because the author has anything to say, never mind anything interesting.

Moore's writing is just dazzling. She has the power to stop me in my tracks and force me to just stop, go back and re-read the preceding paragraph for the sheer pleasure of feeling the words go by. I'm nearing the end of this novel and am looking forward to mining her short story collections.

This is the major literary discovery of the year for me. I see that she teaches writing. Perhaps I'll move to Madison to sit at the feet of this living national treasure.

Without question, this was my favorite literary novel of 2009. Somehow a college-student babysitter in the midwest reckons with the great themes of the 21st Century (war, terrorism, race) with the cool insouciance of Ellen Page in Juno. But this is Lorrie Moore, not Diablo Cody, and Tassie's challenging life syllabus eventually becomes too much for her. While Tassie's bosses Edward and Sarah are fun to laugh at, their irresponsibility is ultimately more than Tassie or the reader can bear. Moore deserves the Pulitzer this year for the bumper stickers alone that she devises in this novel. The songs that Tassie invents with her roommate and the scene where Tassie overhears/mishears the party conversation below her while she watches the children are literary showpieces. This novel is on a par with and reminds me of Updike's Rabbit Trilogy. The Stern Librarian, Demon Hunter (I love my library, I hate zombies).

Beautiful, gorgeous prose that took my breath away and kept my eyes glued to the page to follow every comma, adjective, and sentence length. Tassie is captivating; the brightest observer and a character for whom we want everything good to follow now that she has come of age. This book has the quietude of poetry and the suspense of true crime. But guess what? It's literature. Run, don't walk, read, read, read. Everything is here: the Midwesterner's view of NYC, the New Yorker's view of the Midwest, innocence and its loss, love, the fullness of nature, quirky music, sex, race relations, parenting, childhood, a foodie's paradise, and potatoes. A triumph! Now I must get on with my life.

I am not familiar with earlier works of the author and read the book based on reviews. It seemed to me to be lacking focus, with long sections where the author was simply padding the story. There are two excellent short stories here about the adoption (with the dialogue among the parents quite biting and hilarious) and the death of the brother. Otherwise, I was praying for some resolution of the adoption crisis (which seemed to me to be contrived) although a happy ending was not required. The evidence seems to indicate the author can write but maybe her editor can't edit.