Perhaps I ought to be more descriptive than a common refrain from me regarding recent reads—this being: I love words and sentences! But you must underPerhaps I ought to be more descriptive than a common refrain from me regarding recent reads—this being: I love words and sentences! But you must understand that Lorrie Moore is the master of words and sentences. Actually, that gives her an authoritative, somewhat restrictive connotation. She's like an open vessel for diction, but with the brain to make the best, most interesting choices. Someone in a top review said that Moore is much better at sentences than stories. I agree she is great at sentences, and maybe coming from me, someone who really doesn't need a book to be much more than "a diary of a farm girl" it doesn't mean much, but let's be honest: this book is much more than a diary of a farm girl.
A Gate at the Stairs is a slice of life, I suppose. This slice of life includes the complexities and heartbreaks of our adoption and childcare systems, of adopting and raising a biracial child, of first love and betrayal, of grief and loss, of the effects of war. With Lorrie Moore, I go in knowing she will make me laugh with her wit, forgetting that her stories always end up devastating me. This is a woman who once wrote a story that begins with a woman fatally dropping a baby and manages to still make it funny, after all, even in all the despair. I want everyone to read and appreciate Moore, but I also want her to remain mine. So actually, no one else read this, and if you do, don't get any crazy ideas....more
I love these characters. I love how Thorpe explored consent and mental illness and what it means to be a conscious, living being and I loved all the aI love these characters. I love how Thorpe explored consent and mental illness and what it means to be a conscious, living being and I loved all the absurd little details that provide such satisfying texture. Lucas was so disappointing and dumb, but I still adored him and felt very deeply for him, and his relationship with Vera felt very realistic, and very hopeful. I will be thinking about this for a long time....more
Sometimes you find a book at the perfect time. When I heard the synopsis, I assumed Alphabetical Diaries would be a little gimmicky, maybe tedious. BuSometimes you find a book at the perfect time. When I heard the synopsis, I assumed Alphabetical Diaries would be a little gimmicky, maybe tedious. But instead the book feels like the truest depiction of life I have read. I felt breathless reading this, relieved at how similar my own spiraling worries were to Heti’s. I relate to so much of how she describes writing and the experience of such a love affair with the act.
Most of all this book seems to be the way we look back on our lives, how everything in the past swims around each other. I have no idea the true course of time, but our development throughout life is something nonlinear—meandering and coiling and very murky and dense. ...more
Raising my rating because I can't stop thinking about this book. I loved every character so much and how imperfect they were, how young O'Donoghue allRaising my rating because I can't stop thinking about this book. I loved every character so much and how imperfect they were, how young O'Donoghue allowed them to be and act. I loved this world, and I wish I could read it for the first time again....more
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