Word: gate
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...other characters in “A Gate at the Stairs” initially seem flat—they are colorful, but the reader is never given enough information to theorize about their motives. An epiphany concerning Tassie’s employers near the end of the novel explains some of their actions, but it ultimately reveals more contradictions than solutions to the mystery of their behavior. In the hands of a writer less observant of human nature, the enigmatic behavior of the supporting characters would rob the novel of its internal consistency. But Tassie’s observations...
Despite Moore’s unusual approach to creating characters, the most rewarding moments of “A Gate at the Stairs” come when Tassie is alone, reading and cooking and playing her bass in an apartment that feels too big. These quieter, pensive moments are lovely in their understatement and their insinuation of a profound loneliness that hangs over Tassie and Troy but is never directly acknowledged...
...most high.” Lorrie Moore admires Welty and, on a vacation to Jackson, Mississippi took a photo of Welty’s house for her scrapbook. She appears to have retained Welty’s words as well. In her newest novel, “A Gate at the Stairs,” Moore enters completely into the mind, heart and skin of a dynamic and perceptive college student, and in doing so, has created an incisive portrait of life in America immediately after September 11th...
...Gate at the Stairs” chronicles a year in the life of Tassie Keltjin, the 20-year-old daughter of a potato farmer who has left her hometown of Dellacrosse, Illinois, to attend college in Troy, a nearby university town. The novel starts in 2001, a few months after September 11, and focuses loosely on Tassie’s experiences working as a nanny to Sarah and Edward, a pair of well-meaning, well-to-do liberals who take a sanctimonious and labored approach to parenting their adopted mixed-race toddler...
...hard,” Sarah says in reference to raising a biracial child in a prejudiced community, with a superciliousness that makes for a typical target of Tassie’s witty internal monologue. Tassie’s tone careens between ribald and elegiac, making “A Gate at the Stairs” a novel to read with caution. Tassie’s familiar voice can distract from Moore’s understated style and her love of detail and word games...