Book description
With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East,
twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a 'half-Jewish' farmer's daughter from
the plains of the Midwest, has come to university - escaping her
provincial home to encounter the complex world of culture and
politics. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who
seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is drawn into the life
of their newly-adopted child and increasingly complicated household.
As her past becomes increasingly alien to her - her parents seem older
when she visits; her disillusioned brother ever more fixed on joining
the military - Tassie finds herself becoming a stranger to herself. As
the year unfolds, love leads her to new and formative experiences -
but it is then that the past and the future burst forth in dramatic
and shocking ways. Refracted through the eyes of this memorable
narrator, A Gate at the Stairs is a lyrical, beguiling and wise novel
of our times.
Lorrie Moore is the award-winning author of the story
collections Self-Help, Like Life, and Birds of America, and the novels
Anagrams and Who will Run the Frog Hospital? She currently teaches
English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
