A Gate at the Stairs (Hardcover)

from jnavia

Lorrie Moore is just sooooo very clever and witty. I imagine that for the last decade, she's made little notes whenever she's thought of something clever to write, and this novel is a compilation of those notes pasted over a framework of a somewhat interesting but implausible story. I like wit an...

from pdebolt

Lorrie Moore has written beautifully about complex issues. The adoption of a racially mixed child by a severely damaged white couple ends badly when the child is returned to the adoption agency when the history of the adoptive couple becomes known. Tassie, hired as a baby sitter for the child, is...

from theanalogdivide

"Omit needless words," goes the old saw from Strunk and White. For the longest time, I've taken that to mean that all prose should be stripped to its barest elements. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, the writing becomes inert, lifeless. If you think the above phrase could be shortened ...

from lycomayflower

For the first half of A Gate at the Stairs, I was quite taken with the book. The writing is often very good, the narrator is likable and tells the story with a strong voice, and the atmosphere Moore creates is both gentle and realistic. But at the halfway point, I realized that I didn't understan...

from mckait

This is the story of families. Two families, that are broken in different ways. The book is told in the voice of Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of one of these families. Tassie is the daughter of a potato farmer. He is successful in his own way, but has a laid back attitude to pretty much everythin...