by Kelly Pickerill
The fab review by Jonathan Lethem in the Sunday Times Book Review convinced me to pick up Lorrie Moore’s novel, her first in eleven years, the day I read it. Then the book sat on my bookcase for two months while I was distracted by the barrage of holidays during this time of year. I picked it up again halfway through December, and even amid nights of holiday and retail exhaustion I found myself unable to read less than thirty pages in one sitting.
Tassie Keltjin is a Midwestern farmer’s daughter who, while in college in a liberal university town (her semester docket includes such fare as “The Neutral Pelvis,” “Wine Tasting,” and “Soundtracks to War Movies;” though the latter two are self-explanatory, it bears mentioning that the first is a yoga class), is hired as a nanny by an enigmatic couple on the verge of adopting a mixed-race little girl. All this is happening in the fall of 2001, just after the September 11 attacks, and during the semester following the winter break, when Tassie begins to work for the Thornwood-Brinks, bonding with little Mary-Emma as if she were her own, and she meets darkly handsome, supposedly Brazilian Reynaldo in her “Intro to Sufism” course, embarking on a blinding infatuation with him, she becomes enmeshed in a culture of extreme political correctness, experiencing the consequences of emotional inattention and detachment that are an inevitable result of that culture.
At this point you may be nodding your head and thinking such smug thoughts as, “I know where this is going.” Well, you don’t. Not really. Well, you sort of do. But not in all the most important ways. The reason Moore’s book ended up being one of my favorites this year goes deeper than its narrative. The reason can be found in the subtle ways Tassie learns that she’s not so unlike her sometimes-lunatic employer Sarah Brink, because a life-changing event can be caused by inaction, and too late Tassie realizes that she has let her indecision become a crutch, and that there are forces that can take destructive advantage when one has let herself become mired in insouciance.
A Gate at the Stairs is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes darkly sarcastic, sometimes heavy and tragic, and always brilliant. And Lemuria has autographed copies.
Comments are closed.