A Gate at the Stairs
by Lorrie Moore
List Price:
Our Price: $1.98
You Save: $23.97 (92%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Lorrie MooreEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-09-01
ISBN: 0375409289
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of A Gate at the Stairs
Book Review: "How like the end of love to leave a beautiful corpse"
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Lorrie Moore's much anticipated novel, like the best of her short stories, vibrates with humor, tragedy, and the beauty of startling description. Not long after 9/11, college student Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a Midwestern farmer, begins this story with her "deepest brain still a cupboard of fairy tales." In her bustling college town, she finds herself in a "perpetual, holy condition of bedazzlement" because of her separation, both physically and metaphorically, from family: her gentleman-farmer father who grows boutique potatoes and mouse-free spring greens, her melancholy half-Jewish mother whose outward indifference baffles Tassie, and her aimless but fun-loving brother Robert. She takes courses in Sufism, movie soundtracks, and wine-tasting (a computer glitch allows underage students to register.) Without a demanding schedule, Tassie looks for a part-time job and finds one as a nanny for Sarah and Edward, a couple about to adopt a biracial child. Tassie then falls for the "Brazilian" who sits next to her in class. And her easy banter with her brother is punctuated by a growing distance between them. What Tassie experiences -- through love found and lost -- far exceeds her classroom lectures as she struggles with very real truths about shame, regret, bravery, and the all-too-brief connections between people.
As with all Moore's work, the writing embraces both the absurdity and the sorrow of life. Her characters teeter on the edge of self-destruction and "little homicides" while somehow managing a wry, often hilarious, view of it all. While at times Moore veers off too long in a riff on, say, the way Tassie's friends have changed, and the overheard Wednesday night meetings on racism get tedious, most of A Gate at the Stairs is pitch perfect, full of metaphors and similes that surprise with their accuracy -- little visual tableaux that add memorable texture.
The title, a line from one of the songs Tassie makes up, refers to the way we are locked out of pure love, unable to reach it because of the gate that closes it off to us. While this may seem like a bleak view -- and many things in this novel are bleak -- the way Tassie comes to terms with it gives her maturity and wisdom that she lacked before, thus stripping her forever of childhood and fairy tale dreams.
-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann
Genre Fiction Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Genre Fiction Books
Children of the Stormby Elizabeth Peters
WmMorrow; Published: 2003-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.49
Price in other shops:
Innocenceby Kathleen Tessaro
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2006-05-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Little Altars Everywhere: A Novelby Rebecca Wells
HarperTorch; Published: 2003-02-25; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.99
Price in other shops:
Breakheart Passby Alistair Maclean
Harpercollinspublishers; Published: 1994-05-01; Paperback; Book
Here Be Dragonsby Sharon Kay Penman
Holt, Rinhart and Winston; Published: 1985-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $228.78
The Killing Groundby JACK HIGGINS
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD; Published: 2007; Hardcover; Book
Life Expectancyby Dean Koontz
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Constant Princessby Philippa Gregory
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005; Hardcover; Book
Wolf of the Plains (Conqueror, Book 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harper; Published: 2007; Paperback; Book
Saharaby Clive Cussler
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2005-03-21; Paperback; Book
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Freedom: A Novelby Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2010-08-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.75
Price in other shops:
Olive Kitteridge: Fictionby Elizabeth Strout
Random House; Published: 2008-03-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.56
Price in other shops:
Self-Helpby Lorrie Moore
Alfred A. Knopf; Published: 1985-03-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $44.95
Anagramsby Lorrie Moore
Knopf; Published: 1986-10-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $41.99
Await Your Reply: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)by Dan Chaon
Ballantine Books; Published: 2010-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
A Visit from the Goon Squadby Jennifer Egan
Knopf; Published: 2010-06-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.49
Price in other shops:
Tinkersby Paul Harding
Bellevue Literary Press; Published: 2009-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?by Lorrie Moore
Alfred A. Knopf; Published: 1994-09-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.35
Price in other shops:
Birds of America: Storiesby Lorrie Moore
Knopf; Published: 1998-09-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops:
Birds of America: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)by Lorrie Moore
Vintage; Published: 2010-01-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops: