Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs ** 1/2

Moore's collection of short stories, Birds of America, made me a fan of her sardonic writing style. The first few chapters of A Gate at the Stairs shared that quality, and I enjoyed them. About 75 pages in, however, the book started to lose its way. The writing began to sound self-consciously literary, and the narrator showed too much insight for a twenty-year-old college student fresh from the farm. For example:

Contents may shift during the flight, we had been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about the discontents? Would they please shift, too? And what if oxygen deprivation in the cabin caused one to think in idle spirals and desperate verbal coils like this for the rest of one's life?

Ick. What happened to the clever, funny prose of the early pages? After a strong start, the book was a definite disappointment.