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NAIBA Notables
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
A Gate at the Stairs
by Lorrie Moore
Knopf
ISBN-13: 978-0375409288
September 8, 2009
Description:
As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.
Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.
As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.
This long-awaited new novel by one of the most heralded writers of the past two decades is lyrical, funny, moving, and devastating; Lorrie Moore’s most ambitious book to date—textured, beguiling, and wise.
Bookseller review:
A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore's smart, funny and eccentric novel, introduces Tassie Keltjin, a 20 year old college student at a fictional Wisconsin university, "the Athens of the Midwest." Instead of returning to her parents' farm at the semester break, she takes a job as would-be nanny for a restaurant owner/chef and her husband who are trying to adopt a child. Tassie's easy-going manner, small town charm, and wry sense of humor seem to be the perfect complement to the obsessive, neurotic, demanding chef, Sarah. When Sarah does finally adopt Mary-Emma, a mixed race child, Tassie proves to be an able caretaker and learns a lot about herself and the world. I fell in love with A Gate at the Stairs in the opening pages, immediately attracted to the observant, intelligent, and clever narrator. I think most readers will relish this magical novel.
Mark Laframboise, Politics & Prose, Washington, DC
About the Author:
Lorrie More is the author of the story collections Birds of America and Self-Help, and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
More resources:
High-resolution book jacket
Reading Group Guide
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