A Gate at the Stairs [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

When Tassie's story starts, it is almost too convincing as a portrait of an aimless college girl. I say this because the aimless college years are probably only interesting in retrospect, and to the person who lived through them. So Tassie's stupid classes, unfocused yearnings and blanket rejection of all that is "old" are convincing, but not all that entertaining. This is the case throughout the entire book.

Where her life intersects with the household in which she will work as a nanny, the story moves and engages the reader. The process of private adoption, the sadness of birth mothers, the attachment the "help" develops for the child who is not hers, and the oblique observation of the marriage of your employer; so perfectly done. As perfectly done is the development of Tassie's romance with her mysterious Brazilian, the quiet way she discovers the joys of lovemaking, how she seeks out the passions of her own life on her employer's time, unaware that this is absolutely not right.

But things need to happen in a story, and as hilarious as Tassie and Sarah's conversations are, as oily and disgusting as Edward and his "hair cape" are, as painful as Tassie's plummet into unrequited love with Reynaldo is, when things happen here, they happen. Boom, boom, boom, Tassie is confronted with three great griefs all in a row. Where do you turn when everything in life disappoints you? Home, I guess.

There are things "wrong" with this book. Tassie's voice, though accurate, is at times allowed to veer into hectic, antic, as she talks too much and Moore lets her do that. She tosses off cynical natterings to the point where as i reader I almost didn't like her, because none of her cynicism was based on experience. Also, Moore needs to pick a simile. Even if they're all good, one metaphor per sentence is enough, and there are sentences, paragraphs and pages that are overstuffed and tiring due to metaphorical overload. And the insufferable Wednesday night meetings of racially mixed families; the first one was kind of funny, and enough, because it's painful to hear people go on like that. Were these giving voice or merely making a mockery? I couldn't tell and after the second meeting started, I skimmed. Much more effective is the accurate portrait of what it is like to be out and about with a child of another race, knowing that eyes are on you and conclusions are being reached about who and what you are in the first instant of a stranger's visual perception.

The pleasures of reading Lorrie Moore, her humor, her unmatched gift for metaphor and her painstaking rendition of human emotions, far outweigh any flaws in the book. The scene when Tassie finally eats at Sarah's restaurant is killingly funny and satisfying. But be warned that this is a very sad story, one that raises far more questions about its characters than it ever answers.

Like other reviewers I come to this novel as an admirer of Lorrie Moore's piquant short stories, which render with deftness and sympathy the oddness, pleasure, and pain of being human. All of Moore's strengths as a writer -- her ability to find just the right off-the-wall metaphor, her comic sidewise advance on the most painful experiences, her sardonic wit -- are on display here. But the space afforded her by the longer form appears to have reduced her vigilance in maintaining the economy and precision of her shorter fiction. Too much of a good thing is sometimes just too much.

There were long (they seemed long anyway) stretches in the novel where I wanted to say "OK, I get the point! These people are callow and self-absorbed." Or where I wished she had stopped after the first, or even the second, mind-bending metaphor for the same observation.

And then there is the plot, which hangs together only tenuously. Tassie at school and Tassie at home seem largely unconnected, and there are elements of suspense introduced that trail off into nothingness. Perhaps this could be explained as imitative of life, but it often seems to be gratuitous.

Tassie's family is eccentric, a pleasure we have come to expect from Moore, but too often these people come off as self-parodies. The early character development of Tassie's brother Robert is a caricature that doesn't really pave the way for the depth of grief that engulfs the end of the novel.

Tassie is an interesting character and an entertaining narrator, but her insouciance and diffidence distance us from her throughout, and we never really fully penetrate her self-protective shield. In the end I agree with the reviewer who said that Moore would be better served by leaving the undergraduate world behind and finding adult company.

You wait years for a Lorrie Moore book, then two appear out of the blue. Moore published her last story collection, Birds of America, ten years ago; her last novel, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, fifteen years ago. You know what to expect: small-town America seen with a quirky, poetic eye; a damaged female protagonist; wisecracks, and the howling gusts of sanity and humour. The inevitable blurb from Nick Hornby on the paperback will surely seal the deal. What, then, could possibly go wrong?

A lot, unfortunately. Virtually everyone agrees that Moore is a major talent. It's just that her talent has a default setting - the short story - and when she leaves it, the engine of her narrative stalls. It's a problem particular to short story writers of genius: Cheever and O. Henry both had it. The ties to the 'post 9/11 psyche' seem nebulous and tacked-on; the plot evaporates thirty-nine pages into the novel, and Moore has spun better silk out of similar material in her justly acclaimed story, 'You're Ugly, Too'. Moore deserves your attention, but not for this. Spend your hard-earned cash on her Collected Stories instead.