A Gate at the Stairs

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Set just after the events of September 2001, Moore's deft, lyrical novel brings readers up against the heart of racism, the shock of war, and the carelessness perpetrated against others in the name of love.

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Publishers Weekly (07/13/2009)
Moore ("Anagrams") knits together the shadow of 9/11 and a young girl's bumpy coming-of-age in this luminous, heart-wrenchingly wry novelthe author's first in 15 years. Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown girl weathering a clumsy college year in the Athens of the Midwest, is taken on as prospective nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent adventures in prospective motherhood involve a pregnant girl with scarcely a tooth in her head and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriendboth encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie. In a parallel tale, Tassie lands a lover, enigmatic Reynaldo, who tries to keep certain parts of his life a secret from Tassie. Moore's graceful prose considers serious emotional and political issues with low-key clarity and poignancy, while generous flashes of witTessie the sexual innocent using her roommate's vibrator to stir her chocolate milkendow this stellar novel with great heart. "(Sept.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal (08/15/2009)
Just months after 9/11, college student Tassie Keltjin, the brilliant daughter of a Midwestern farmer, becomes a part-time nanny for an older white couple who have adopted an African American baby. Enjoying her delightful young charge and reveling in her love affair with her Brazilian boyfriend, Tassie has a growing suspicion that her employers are somehow off. When their identities, as well as her boyfriend's, are blown, Tassie heads home, only to be hit with another, more devastating shock. VERDICT Moore uses the same kind of poetic precision of language found in her dazzling short story collections (e.g., "Birds of America") to draw the reader into her long-awaited third novel (after "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?"). The challenge for readers is to reconcile the beautiful sharpness of her language with two wildly improbable plot threads. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/1/09.]Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

ISBN: 0375409289 | EAN: 9780375409288
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group  | Publication Date: September, 2009

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