A Gate at the Stairs
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed.
With her past becoming 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 the stranger she has at time imagined herself to be. 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.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Excellent prose, distinct feelings, deals with the present condition of modern America through the eyes of the heroine, who happens to be of mixed race.
An almost rites of passage story of a young student / part time nanny, who experiences 3 traumas within a year. A strong mixture of tragedy, humour and close observation.
An amazing novel which explores the limitations and insufficiencies of love with an emotional precision.
The author uses a poetic precision of language to probe war, racism and betrayal.
Moore’s graceful prose consider serious emotional and political issues with low-key clarity and poignancy and generous flashes of wit.
The books tells the story of twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a Midwestern college student, in a year in which she works as a nanny with a family adopting a biracial child. In the aftermath of 9/11, the coming-of -age story brings out serious emotional and political issues through Tassie’s witty observations of the world around her.
This novel, set on a Midwestern farm just after September 11th, explores the limitations of love, amid challenges of racism and the war on terror.