A Gate at the Stairs

by Lorrie Moore

2009 · 336 pages

literary fiction
books
fiction & literature

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About this book

From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times) comes a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America.

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.

“An indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11…. Moore has written her most powerful book yet.” —The New York Times

Quotes by Lorrie Moore

From Wikiquote

And so they drove on. The night before, a whole day could have shape and design. But when it was upon you, it could vanish tragically to air.
But she had no memory of how to be brave. Here, it seemed, she had no memories at all. Nothing triggered them. And once in a while, when shegave voice to the fleeting edge of one, it seemed like something she was making up.
As a vacuum cleaner can start to pull up the actual thread of a carpet, her brains had been sucked dry by too much yoga.