A Gate at the Stairs (Vintage Contemporaries)

A Gate at the Stairs (Vintage Contemporaries) Overview

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award
Finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star, Financial Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Real Simple

Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed. Told through the eyes of this memorable narrator, A Gate at the Stairs is a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America.

A Gate at the Stairs (Vintage Contemporaries) Specifications

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Lorrie Moore's people are jokesters, wisenheimers. They hold the world, and the language used to describe it, a little off to the side, where they can turn it around and, if not figure it out, at least find something funny to say about it, which, often, is not quite enough. It's been 11 years since her last book, 15 since her last novel, but A Gate at the Stairs is vintage Moore: brittly witty and lurkingly dark, the portrait of a Midwest college town through the eyes of Tassie Keltjin, a student from the country whose mind has been lit up by learning but who spends nearly all this story out of class, as a nanny for a couple who have adopted a toddler. Tassie's a bit of a toddler herself (and an ideal narrator because of it), testing the world as if through her teeth, and she finds the world stranger and more deeply wounded the more she learns of it. Her investigations make A Gate at the Stairs sad, hilarious, and thrillingly necessary. --Tom Nissley

Customer Reviews

A gate on the stairs of Lorrie Moore is the story of Keltjin Tassie, a history of training. Tassie is the daughter of an unusual Bauer, one of the special foods is growing for restaurants. She goes to a university not too far from home, where she takes a job as part-time baby sitter for a family mystery. It turns out that this family has a big secret, which led to slightly novel.Tassie the place is always kept drawn deeper into their world, and will change forever. This novel dealsRace, class, love and loss, as we all saw and heard this extraordinary young woman. I found this a story that attracted me, and I felt the portrait of a girl from the Midwest average quite accurate. I would recommend this book as not to read the light, but as a story that make you think again and again.

Low Price @ Amazon