Lorrie Moore

The cold came late that fall and the songbirds were caught off guard. By the time the snow and wind began in earnest, too many had been suckered into staying, and instead of flying south, instead of already having flown south, they were huddled in people's yards, their feathers puffed for some modicum of warmth. I was looking for a job. I was a student and needed babysitting work, and so I would walk from interview to interview in these attractive but wintry neighborhoods, the eerie multitudes of robins pecking at the frozen ground, dun-gray and stricken--though what bird in the best of circumstances does not look a little stricken--until, at last, late in my search, at the end of the week, startlingly, the birds had disappeared. I did not want to think about what had happened to them. Or rather, that is an expression--of politeness, a false promise of delicacy--for in fact I wondered about them all the time: imagining them dead, in stunning heaps in some killing cornfield outside of town, or dropped from the sky in twos and threes for miles down along the Illinois state line.

I was looking in December for work that would begin at the start of the January term. I'd finished my exams and was answering ads from the student job board, ones for "childcare provider." I liked children--I did!--or rather, I liked them OK. They were sometimes interesting. I admired their stamina and candor....

"A Gate at the Stairs" is one of my favorite books. It's Lorrie Moore, so it's bleakly funny. It opens with this little parable about global warming: Winter arrives so late, the birds are caught off-guard and confused, and it seems that they just die. The narrator can't even confirm that they're dead; she imagines them heaped in some "killing cornfield," which seems to be a variation on "The Killing Fields" of Pol Pot. It's clear the narrator empathizes with the birds--because she, too, is in the middle of a transition, or an attempted transition. (Her "seasons" are changing awkwardly, just as the birds' seasons are changing.) Also, the idea of corpses tucked away is a little bit of foreshadowing: One particular corpse will "haunt" most of this story, and you won't get the details of the death until very close toward the end.

A corpse! Yes, "A Gate at the Stairs" is like a crime novel in disguise. The narrator will feel, for most of the story, that she is a part of some kind of sinister cover-up, but she will struggle to confirm even the fact that a crime has occurred--and then will struggle more to understand the nature of the crime. The author and the antagonist know something that the protagonist doesn't know: This enjoyable sense of tension pushes you through the story.

I also love Moore's awareness of self-delusion. Notice how she catches the narrator's true feeling about children. "I liked children--I did!--or rather, I liked them OK. They were sometimes interesting...." Too afraid of confessing that she finds kids frequently boring, the narrator lies, then doubles down on her lie, then sheepishly arrives at the truth. Isn't that just like life?

Moore underlines--again and again--in this story--just how hard life is, and just how negligent and flawed we all are, and just how tricky it can be to be patient with oneself and kind with others. The narrator seems to "jump off the page": There she is, for you, bizarre and "real," even though she isn't real. The story is as enchanting as "the voice." The antagonist seems as vivid as the narrator.

"A Gate at the Stairs" is Moore's most recent novel, and it earned great reviews. I hope we'll get a few more novels from her now that her kid is (I think) out of the house. I wish she published more often!