08 February 2015

Book 11: A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore


A new to me author - apparently very well known for her short stories.  [Short stories are one of those things in my life which I find myself not liking as well as I somehow ought to given other factors about myself - (Elvis Costello being another example of this phenomenon) - I've just never quite been able to really get into short stories, even good ones.] 

This book was very good, I thought - a moving portrait - odd in places, but in a way that rang true - of family life, of being a college student who doesn't quite fit in, of marriage, perhaps of being a sibling. The author has an eye for detail and a nice turn of phrase and while I could feel a sense of some sort of doom hanging over the story from the start, how or where that doom was going to manifest wasn't certain until one got there.

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