A Gate at the Stairs

By Lorrie Moore

Lyrical, devastatingly funny, wise, and beguiling, A Gate at the Stairs is Lorrie Moore’s most ambitious book to date.

The long-awaited new novel from one of the most heralded writers of the past thirty years, A Gate at the Stairs is a book of stunning power.

Set just after the events of September 2001, it is a story about Tassie Keltjin, a twenty-year-old making her way in a new world and coming of age. Tassie is a “smile-less” girl from the plains of the mid-west. She has come to a university town, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, and Simone de Beauvoir. In between semesters, she takes a part-time job as a nanny for a family that seems mysterious and glamorous to her. Though her liking for children tends to dwindle into boredom, Tassie begins to care for, and protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own. As the year unfolds, she is drawn even deeper into the world of the child and her hovering parents, and her own life back home becomes alien to her. As life reveals itself dramatically and shockingly, Tassie finds herself forever changed—less the person she once was, and more and more the stranger she feels herself to be.

Under the novel’s languid surface, Moore’s deft and lyrical writing skillfully illustrates the heart of racism, the shock of war, and the carelessness perpetrated against others in the name of love. It is the novel for our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9780385668255

Lorrie Moore

LORRIE MOORE is the author of the story collections Bark,Birds of America,Like Life, and Self-Help and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams. Her work has won honors from the Lannan Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish Times International Prize for Fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the PEN/Malamud Award.

Reviews for A Gate at the Stairs

[eye_gee-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a case where I think I'd have enjoyed the book more if not the audio version.

[narshkite · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have often read books i did not particularly enjoy, but which I admired. Less frequently I have experiences like this where I generally enjoy a book despite thinking it a bit of a hot mess. There is a really good story in here but Moore (whose short stories I love) couldn't seem to decide what the story should be about. Sure, all the characters' stories are about the transience of life, love, and certainly connection and about how we abdicate our duties at times and then are left to deal with the consequences of having done so. Those are pretty giant themes, and turns out they do not create any real cohesion. There is a lot of other stuff here too. So much religion -- the casual antisemitism of Jews, the barely explored and false tribalism of Muslims, the godlessness of Unitarians, and the fact that despite the benign (and sometimes not so benign) neglect of our religious affiliations they still form a core part of our identity. There is Tassie herself, charming and interesting, but also intermittently wise as an owl and naive as a baby, but not much in between. Another side story that needed pruning (or better yet, amputation) was the dismal boyfriend story. It presented us with an inconsistent portrayal of Tassie and a hasty, shallow, oversimplified exploration of radicalization. I wish Moore had stayed with Tassie and Sara's story. she clearly wanted to explore interracial adoption, and to wedge in the side stories she restricted most of that exploration to overheard snippets of conversation from support group meetings. That was a lazy way to get in the research the author found interesting, and which was interesting. Too bad it was not developed and explored rather than the silly antiwar message which did not fit with the rest of the story. (Antiwar messages are not inherently silly, but this is a message delivered in platitudes.) And yet I enjoyed the read overall. Moore is a wonderful writer, her humor and wordplay are best in class, and reading it is a joy. I went with a 3 here, but I am not sure that is accurate. More accurately I would say the prose is a 5, the structure is a 1, and there are stories within which all may have been 5s if fully explored, but which were 2s and 3s because they were not. Confused yet?

[bookishjojo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was my first Moore and she sort of blew my mind. There were passages of prose so beautiful, I would read them over and over. I didn't give the full 5-stars as I found the story a bit disjointed. Moore deals with some very heavy themes and, at times, it felt like there was some "trying too hard" moments that tripped up the flow of the story and my reading. There is a lot to think about with this story - my brain is still whirring over Moore's writing. The last part of the story is near perfect.

[dele2451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's certainly a lot of pain and injustice in this book, but I'm glad to have read it. Moore has a unique writing voice and a kind of "old soul" wisdom ensconced in her story about the world of young women in the modern age. If you're looking for some sort of feel good story or thriller then keep moving. But if you can stomach the gut punches, this is a novel well worth the discomfort.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Would like to read more by this writer. Lovely writing and very funny, although the story took some dark turns halfway through. Tassie the protagonist is a wonderful and likable college student.

[bookgirljen · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't understand why this book received such stellar reviews. The writing was just too much - bizarre, disjointed phrases, overly loaded with adjectives. Difficult to read. I had a hard time believing the main character - a college sophomore - would be having the kind of thoughts she was. The plot was all over the place, and important pieces just trailed off. The end was horrible. I would not recommend this book. I'm just glad I checked it out from the library and didn't spend money on it.

[tercat-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What an interesting book... and yet, when finished with it I felt like I was left with all these pieces and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. This was my first time reading Lorrie Moore, and overall I do like how she writes. Sometimes it's quirky, sometimes it's beautiful. Sometimes she goes off on minute tangents, just because the language seems to take her there. Not having read anything else by Moore (yet), I don't know if this is something she does regularly, or if it's specific to this book and therefore this particular narrator. It's something that could be annoying coming from a lesser writer. While it doesn't always work here, it doesn't really bother me, either.

Moore is known largely for her short stories, and at times while reading this I felt like sections were written as short stories and then pieced together. It jumps around a bit. In some ways, that makes sense. The narrator is in college, and life at school during the semester can be very separate from life at home on break. I didn't like some of the characters much--Sarah and Ed in particular (though you do sometimes feel a little sorry for Sarah), but I don't think I was supposed to.

Now and then Moore throws in something a bit crazy--a bit hard to believe. I guess it's to her credit that as much as I raised my eyebrows when reading these passages, I didn't give up on her or on the book. She gets away with it, if only barely sometimes.

This book was a gift from Amy. Amy, thank you so much for introducing me to Lorrie Moore. As you say, maybe this isn't the best possible introduction to her work, but it's pretty good and it has definitely made me want pick up her other books.

[ahgonzales · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book. A lot of the other reviews said that the book was a unfocused, but I thought it was a very nice snapshot of the first time someone leaves their family home and goes out into the world. The narrator, Tassie, is a young college student looking for her first job.The entire book had a very strong culture clash theme going throughout. It starts off with the shock of moving from a small agricultural town to a more liberal college city. Tassie mostly acts as an observer as she moves through her new city. The difference between the lifestyle of Tassie's family and her new employer emphasises the class differences, and are repeated in Tassie's employer's actions. The strongest theme, almost to the point of being another character in the book, is the casual and overt racism Tassie witnesses. The book is really interesting in addressing racism around the characters, but really showing the privilege that allows them to only engage it when they want to.The end of the book is a little meandering, but meaningful and important in Tassie's life. I really enjoyed the book and I would highly recommend it.

[petreaburchard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book, sort of. Sort of not. The writing was snappy, which I enjoyed except when it got so snappy that I found myself remarking on the writing, having lost the story because of it.

But the most interesting character in the novel, the mother of an adopted child and the protagonist's employer, simply disappears near the end. Without giving spoilers: she left something dangerous with the protagonist that goes nowhere (at least, it doesn't affect the story). She left her business. She left the book.

Too many strings left loose.

[bibleblaster · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. In that way that impressions form about writers when one has never read them but only heard about them, I expected Moore to have a sort of postmodern whiny narrative voice. But, on the whole, I found the voice here to be much more engaging and compassionate and wise and genuinely funny. I have some hesitations and criticisms, but I will probably read more Moore...

[ellenreads · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Liked:
1) The sections when Tassie is with her family were wonderful
2) Lorrie Moore is very funny.
3) The ending was perfect.
Didn't like:
1) Poorly constructed plot - Moore tried to achieve too much with this book.
2) Moore is funny, but sometimes she pushes it too far with her undertones of "How clever am I?!
3) The Wednesday night conversations were tiresome.

[fefferbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if it hadn't so completely lacked focus. The storyline involving Tassie's relationship with Sarah and Edward and their adoption of Emmie was engaging, and the racial issues it explored were interesting and relevant. And then, suddenly, 3/4ths of the way through the book, Moore just dropped that storyline entirely and decided to focus on...what? Tassie? Death? Afghanistan? Loss? I'm not even certain. And that was the problem with this book. I wish she'd stayed with Sarah and Emmie.

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to like Lorrie Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs" but honestly, the book really grated on me more and more as it went on.There are a lot of interesting ideas in the book, which centers on Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a potato farmer who becomes a babysitter for a child adopted through unethical means. There are a bunch of storylines that never really converge, including raising the challenges of raising a child of a different race, terrorism and the War in Afghanistan.Moore has a great sense of humor and makes some clever observations. I liked her use of language and her overall writing style.But the book's problems outweighed its strengths. Tassie, our narrator, seems to be a bit daft and so self-involved she is unable to grasp anything going on around her. The book's adoption agency is some of hybrid between agencies that offer domestic infant and foster care adoption, creating an odd setup that nagged at me throughout the book. And the Wednesday night conversations -- to explore ideas about race -- were just lists of quotes without much depth that grew tiresome, but kept reappearing.Overall, I thought the book was filled with terrific ideas, but it never quite realized its potential.

[athurman-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A bad book from a good writer.

[midwestms · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't finish this book. The young was inconsistent--in-depth descriptions of what surrounds her, but hopelessly naive with situations she finds herself in. I really felt reviews were over the top..

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a tough book to review. Chosen as one of the NY Times top 10 books of 2009, I had high expectations. I can see why this author is so well liked. Her writing is amazing - her choice of words, the cadence, the humor - absolutely beautiful to read and listen to. The problem I had with this book is that there is no cohesive plot. Unlike some of these introspective stream of consciousness books, there is plenty of story - just too many disparate things were going on. The story revolves around a college student named Tassie. It started to focus on her part time job as a nanny for a family who adopts an African American child. That seemed like a good plot. But then it focused on Tassie's romance with another student who turns out to be not at all who he said he was - plot 2. And then there is a deeper story about the adoptive parents that threatens the new family - plot 3. And of course Tassie's brother, decides to enlist - yikes! At the end of the book, all of the individual stories were finished, but I felt like I was missing some overall message.

I will try another Lorrie Moore and I would have no problem recommending this for it's excellent writing. But, don't ask me to write an essay on the theme of this one.

[dlkeur · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Try angsty, "atmospheric", and utterly self-indulgent, never mind the fact that it's too obvious that her editor must be illiterate. Either that or she knows someone or is related to someone to get this kind of bottom-of-the-pit novel published by a major publishing house.

[cherybear · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Loved parts of it. Others not so much. Usually love Lorrie Moore's writing. College student takes part time job with couple adopting a child, assisting with the child's care. Comes to love the child and begin to relate to the mother. Odd side stories (like Tassie's "romance"). A secret from the couple's past changes everything. Non-ending type ending. Always love stories set in Wisconsin--this one is set in Madison, although in the book it is "Troy."

[nyiper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe it's Tassie's age that was the problem for me---this was a very listenable audio but I did get a little tired of her wanderings off into space on various topics. I actually loved the voice of Sarah, the mother figure where Tassie was hired as the nanny---Mia Barron was terrific with the voices!!! I wanted to know what was going to happen and fortunately, the story kept coming back to just that...the progress of Tassie's life. As another reviewer said, I loved parts of it, but other parts, not so much....... And yes, leaving us at the end with too many unanswered questions??? Not my favorite sort of "ending."

[cjservis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bizarre, sad, post-9/11 story. Definitely not a book for everyone. I just couldn't put this novel down though, such a compelling narrative voice. I liked author Lorrie Moore's style. (on loan from Cindy)

[lynsey2-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book reads like an overly-intellectualized Jodi Piccoult novel. Actually, Jodi writes this type of melodrama better. Moore is a witty writer but at times it felt like she lost track of the story line in search of as many witticisms as she could find. She also went off on tangents that seemed more about her personal rants than about developing characters or the story. There were definitely moments in the book that stood out as she is a very gifted writer but over all I felt the book was rambling and a bit disjointed and there were several situations that did not ring true.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. What a great book. Not perfect (is there a perfect book for me?) but a wonderful read. I just wanted it to go on for ever. I loved the main character, Tassie, and wanted to hear more about her life.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tassie Keltjin is a 20-year-old Midwest farm girl who is now away at college in a larger city than that in which she grew up. She gets a part-time job as a nanny to a couple who are eager to adopt a child; so eager, that she is hired before a child is placed with them, and she is asked to participate in the “parent” interviews. She has a roommate who is mostly absent - spending all her time at her boyfriend’s place - and a possible new romance with a Brazilian student she sits next to in “Intro to Sufism.” Her father grows organic, specialty potatoes that are all the rage in trendy restaurants as far away as Chicago. Her younger brother Robert is struggling in his senior year of high school and trying to decide whether to go into the Army, go to college, or attend the local truck driving school (the latter said only half jokingly), and he wants his sister’s advice. If that plot summary doesn’t sound gripping, it is because it isn’t. This is more of a character study than a plot-driven story. Moore’s writing is wonderful in places; I kept reading aloud to anyone who would listen. She plays with words and images and completely entertained that part of my brain. But I kept wondering where the story was going. There are some major things that happen to Tassie. And she is faced with issues of racism, terrorism in post 9/11 America, budding romance, loss of loved ones, etc. A lot of plot elements – big and small – seem to just … end, never to be mentioned again.*** SPOILER ALERT ***For example … Baby Mary-Emma is taken away, never to be heard from again. Reynaldo turns out to be not-only-NOT Brazilian, but probably a terrorist … or is he? Murph is nearly poisoned by a concoction made by Tassie’s nutso boss Sarah, apparently with the intent to poison her husband and/or his paramour … or not. The whole scene where she crawls into the casket with the remains of her brother is not just creepy, it’s completely unbelievable. ****SPOILER ENDS****Okay then … what about character development? I like a character-driven novel. But I have to be able to connect to the character in some way, to understand her (even if I do not like her), to want to know what and how she thinks and feels and how her emotions and values affect her actions. I liked Tassie just fine. We do get a lot of her musings, but there is a lot of rambling in her thoughts and I don’t get a clear sense of who she is. I just didn’t connect with her strongly enough to overcome the lack of plot. As for the other characters in the book … I didn’t connect with them at all. So I give it 3 stars primarily because I love Moore’s ability with words. Too bad she could not manage to give me a story line that engaged me and kept me wanting more Moore.

[christineellei · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tassie Keltjin is a college student who has led a fairly sheltered life. She grew up on a farm so never really held a real job, but now she needs to earn a little money and accepts a position as a nanny. Strangely, she is hired before the child, to be adopted, has arrived. Against her better judgement she becomes involved in the adoption process and quickly learns about the seedier side of life. Giving her heart to this little girl and then to her mysterious boyfriend Reynaldo she learns that it is possible to get that heart broken. When one is sad and feeling alone the only place to turn is home. Sadly, instead of being a haven in which to heal, home offers only more heartbreak for Tassie.

The first half of this book grabbed my interest immediately. The story captivates as Ms. Moore weaves in issues of adoption, teenage pregnancy, class and race issues. Towards the middle of this book Tassie’s life takes a dramatic turn (I won’t specify because I do not want to include a “spoiler alert”). Tassie’s story continues on in a totally different direction. I was surprised and then very quickly disappointed. I wanted to know what happened after the event and it was never alluded to again. I finished the book with the hope that there would be another small mention to satisfy my curiosity, but alas, it never came. I was left hanging in a most unpleasant manner and itt spoiled the whole book for me.

[russellbittner · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Given that I read it many years ago, I now only vaguely remember Birds of America as an impressive collection of short stories. Yet I remember it as very impressive. And so, Lorrie Moore’s name stuck in my mental card catalog as one to return to.


I then found this hard copy of A Gate at the Stairs on a stoop here in Brooklyn these several years later. Stone stairs; no gate: in other words, an invitation to pick it up – which I did – and keep it for a rainy or work-free day.


As I approach the end of the novel, I’m still stuck with the same misgivings I had early on – namely, that Ms. Moore is telling this story through the wrong voice. Had she chosen a third-person omniscient voice, all would’ve been well. But she didn’t. She chose to tell this story through a first person singular voice – and that of a twenty-year-old college student. This was the author’s decision.


There were times when I thought she hit the right note – but far more often, when she didn’t. No matter how bright, how precocious, how enlightened a twenty-year-old might be, she doesn’t talk or think like this one. No, the fault lies with Lorrie Moore – and an author of Ms. Moore’s reputation and experience should know better.


As just one of hundreds of examples, I give you this:


“I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a very special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science. I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seemed to be saying, ‘Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!’ (p. 136).


The sentiment here may well be absolutely correct. But a twenty-year-old college student just doesn’t see it this way. A twenty-year-old college student might dare to enter a Whole Foods – and if she did, she might then dare to think this is the way I’d eat if only I could afford it. Whole Foods is not Tiffany’s or the local BMW/Mercedes dealer, both of which we can do without. Whole Foods is just a grocery store – but the kind of grocery store all of us would like to have access to if our sorely dithered purse strings were not already stretched to the breaking point.


I consequently have to differ with Ms. Moore’s sentiment (through her mouthpiece character) that “I had also learned that in literature – perhaps as in life – one had to speak not of what the author intended(,) but of what a story intended for itself” (pp. 263 – 264). I’m sorry, but I feel an author should be in complete control of what she writes. How others choose to interpret it is not her concern. But she – and she alone – is responsible for every white space she chooses to obliterate with a letter, a mark of punctuation, a word, a sentence, an idea. A given story is merely standing by and waiting to be told.


And not to be picayune, but there is that little business on p. 281 of “…where by this time no one but I was seated without a companion…”. Ms. Moore no doubt knows that ‘but’ can serve as both a conjunction and a preposition – and that, if as a preposition, it must take the objective case. And so, I have to wonder (to paraphrase an old Peter, Paul & Mary song): ‘where have all the copy editors at Alfred A. Knopf gone?’


RRB
07/05/14
Brooklyn, NY

[elizabethandrew-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful prose, but a bleak portrait of contemporary America. Are we really this disconnected from one another? Are adoption agencies really this cavalier and cruel?

[lxydis-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Everybody raves about this book. Thank god there is obviously a person other than me who finds it (as Jonathan Lethem says in the first line of his rapturous NYT review, in order to prove them wrong) "too punny". I breathed a sigh of relief when I read this, and decided to give up for sure, however enthusiastic the reviews were. (incl one by--the very funny and very punny--writer whom I LOVE, Geoff Dyer!). I guess when it comes to humor, de gustibus....
Personally I would add "too precious" and "too studiedly unpretentious".
(I am listening to the audio version, and I think the reader does not help at all, as she emphasizes all the adjectives--and puns--making the writing sound even more affected than it might be. But since I have tried to read LM before and had a similar sickly-sweet experience, I'm giving this up. Sorry.

[erickibler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At first this book seems like one of those indie comedy films. Like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine. Collisions of skewed, oddball characters in situations that tease at tragedy but resolve into happy endings. Tassie Keltjin, a dry-witted yet naive college student, becomes the nanny for a middle aged couple who are adopting a child. In the wake of 9/11, she takes on a dubiously Brazilian boyfriend. As the story continues, things get a bit disturbing. The adoptive parents are brittle and damaged by a secret tragedy. Tassie's brother joins the army. People and relationships are not what they seem.

This is a coming of age novel, but not one in the usual mode, where a naively optimistic youth learns through experience to adopt a more cautious optimism. Tassie isn't all that optimistic to begin with, and her experiences net her the knowledge that life is cold and uncertain. There are no easy answers. Indeed, there are no answers at all.

Still, there is a dry humor that keeps despair from swallowing the ending.

[cat1ballou · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So, funny story. I "borrowed" this book from the used department because I was about an hour early to an off-site event & had nothing to read (the horror!). I knew it was on my list, so I was still frustrated with myself for not planning ahead, but not as frustrated as I would have been otherwise. There are about twelve books on my nightstand, after all, three with time limits. Anyway, I figured I'd start it, and then be able to pick it back up after I'd made more of a dent in my bedside stack.

Except! It turned out to be pretty gripping! And it fit in my purse! And I could read it at that event, & on the bus, & on the train, & so I didn't return it to the shelf as I had originally intended. Fittingly, I was working at another off-site event last night when I finished it.

Epilogue: I returned it to the used shelf last night. And I still forgot to put another paperback in my purse this morning.

[melanielgarrett · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the early stages of this book I was overwhelmed with the sheer verve of the writing. It is crammed with astute, darkly funny, and often poignant micro-observations, and so it is easy to see what all the hype was about. However, I came away questioning its categorization as a novel. To me, it felt like the sum of its parts never quite added up to a whole. I felt it increasingly hard to pick up and all too easy to skim through looking for signs of the few threads which held my interest.

All in all, quite a disappointment, because I really *wanted* to love it.