I read Lorrie Moore’s latest novel, “A Gate at the Stairs,” a couple of months ago and came away less than impressed. This was not expected. I’ve enjoyed Moore’s past work immensely. And by “Moore’s past work”, I mean “Birds of America.” So, take what follows with that considerable grain of salt.
Don’t misunderstand me. A Gate at the Stairs has many good qualities and is eminently readable. It’s a compelling story with sharp writing, and Moore’s clear-eyed view and gallows humor are abundantly present. The narrative follows the career of one Tassie Keltjin, a farm girl who leaves home for university in the midwestern town of Troy. Tassie seeks employment and lands a childcare role with a liberal couple who subsequently adopt a biracial girl of two. Along the way, she falls in and out of love, learns the usual lessons about white liberal hypocrisy, and stumbles onto the horrific past of her employers.
However, while many of the individual elements are good, they don’t quite hang together, or at least they didn’t for me. Your mileage may vary. The biggest issue is structural–portions of Tassie’s life come in and out of the main story with little apparent relation to the whole and little effort to develop them. Her brother Robert, the focus of a significant subplot later in the book, is something of a cardboard cutout. And Tassie’s doomed love carries a 9/11 link that isn’t picked up elsewhere, making it seem merely gratuitous.
Tassie herself is also something of a problem. She’s a typically self-oriented college student, and as such is not particularly likable for long stretches of the book. She lazily ignores her brother’s email plea for help, she continues to allow her boyfriend to photograph her employers’ child even when asked not to, and she leaves–with entirely predictable consequences for her roommate–a container of poison in her fridge.
Tassie is also too slick and glib to be believable as a farm girl who is supposed to be so naive that she’s stunned when a professor wears a tie with jeans, which brings us to the other issue here: The cutting humor that works so well in Birds of America here seems more like a device to try to hold reader interest here in lieu of a firm structure to tie the narrative together. In one lengthy section, a description of the conversation of a support group run by Tassie’s employer is shot through with attempts at humor from Tassie that fall decidedly–painfully-flat.
It’s not that “A Gate at The Stairs” is bad, but it doesn’t feel like a coherent whole. One wonders if Moore’s talent isn’t better suited to shorter formats that don’t place such pressure on structure.
