So I read Lorrie Moore's The Gate at The Stairs and well, of course it was readable because Moore is a great writer, but overall I give the book a B and that's only because I'm feeling generous after slogging through my students' terrible research papers. I have two more, but I'm a tad murderous, which means I should quit while all persons are still living in the house.
Anyway, Moore's book. If you're planning on reading it, you should stop reading this now because there are some minor spoilers. If I had to sum up in one phrase why it didn't work for me I would say that it doesn't gel. It just doesn't come together in any cohesive or particularly riveting way. It's about a 20 year old college student in Wisconsin who goes to work for an eccentric woman (the husband is pretty secondary) when she adopts a half-black toddler. It's also about Tassie's brother and parents, race relations, college life, terrorists, 9/11, and the bass guitar. And potatoes.
Maybe Moore's point was to take all these seemingly disparate things and loosely connect them because life tends to be more loose connections that well gelled pieces of the puzzle, but I wanted to be lost in the plot, it's a novel for goodness sake. Instead of feeling lost though, I felt distant.
Like, Tassie, the main character, is all involved with Mary-Emma, the adopted toddler, and then SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENS, and she's no longer in Mary-Emma's life and Mary-Emma isn't mentioned again for more than 50 pages. I think that's weird. Maybe it's the mama in me, but wouldn't Tassie think about this poor 2 year old? Also, it bugged me that the toddler was so perfect. I just don't buy that someone whose been in foster care would so quickly and happily adapt. I hope I'm wrong, but most two-year olds who live in stable environments from day 1 have issues and tantrums and meltdowns in large public gatherings. It bugged me that Mary-Emma never did any of these things.
Also, Tassie plays the bass so every 30-50 fifty pages she whips it out and there's a paragraph about what she's playing, but it just didn't feel real to me. It felt like Moore giving her CHARACTER SOMETHING TO DO. Inorganic I guess is the word.
Oh, and there are pages of dialogue chunks about race and kids and I found it so boring! And finding Moore boring is so sad.
So yeah. Those are my quickie little thoughts. Ms. Kakutani felt quite different though.
5 comments:
Oh god, what horrible thing happens to the toddler? I read Moore's peed onk short story while Winter the newborn napped next to me. I was a teary mess.
The horrible thing isn't HORRIBLE in that she's killed or maimed. She just gets taken away from the family rather suddenly.
OK, I thought there was an accident involving the gate at the stairs...but that would have been TOO obvious, right?
I didn't like the way everyone has such an arch, quip-y way of talking.
If I could write as well as Lorrie Moore, I'd object to the extreme trajectories of plot, but I cannot possibly compete with her descriptive capabilities. Those Wisconsin and Iowan wintery colds also ring true. Can I accept the way that couple deals with the child? I can't, but I think the real problem with the book is that it's hard to accept the way they killed their son. The terrorist boyfriend is also too absurd. The September 11th theme is not quite an honest one, despite recent news stories that suggest its relevance. Maybe I protest too much, but the contrivance is hard to take.
Nonetheless, I think Lorrie Moore is a champion of the creation of atmosphere. I could not put down this book. Two days, period, is all it took for me to read the book. Now that is pretty remarkable. I wish it were a better book, but it's still unforgettable. It's melodramatic and crazy creepy, but it's also the work of someone who knows how to hook a reader. I wish I could do that. I wish I could describe a setting, any setting, as well as she does.
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