Tots Tale

A Gate at the Stairs Lorrie Moore Alfred A. Knopf Pages: 322 25.95

The first time I read anything by Lorrie Moore,it was that truly terrifying short story,People Like That Are the Only People Here,about a baby who is diagnosed with cancer. Characters called Mother,Father and Baby encounter the Oncologist,the Surgeon and others in the alien world of Peed Onk,or Paediatric Oncology.

Moores new novel A Gate at the Stairs,her first in over a decade,is set in a different but equally troubled and alien world. Tassie Keltjin,the Midwestern farm-girl narrator,is a 20-year-old college student in a university town,looking for ways to make money beyond selling her plasma. Back home at her parents farm,Tassies brother,who is having trouble at high school,is considering joining the army as an option other than diesel driving. And Mary-Emma,the baby to whom Tassie becomes nanny,is a biracial,adopted child. Moore continues to be profoundly concerned about children and the state of the world in which they are growing up. The gate of the title is literally the baby gate at the top of the stairs. Tassies employer urges her to be careful about it. I dont want her tumbling down8230; Babygate! Now theres a scandal. But the world beyond the baby gate is filled with a different set of hazards from which there is little shelter or protection. The novel is set in post-9/11 America and war is being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers without a war get bored, says Tassies brother,who gets his information from the movies. And sometimes they get stationed in hot,edgy places and start to want one.

Citizens of this little liberal university town in the Midwest are not immune to the epidemic of hatred that rages elsewhere in the world. The relationship of Mary-Emmas adoptive parents,Sarah Brink and Edward Thornwood,is taut with discord. The contradictions of paid housecleaning services and child care have freed them to pursue their professions as restaurateur and cancer researcher. And then there are the central issues of racism and adoption: the babys colour,the babys hair,the babys real mother. Theyre not all brown either, says a woman from an adoption agency to an adoptive mother,telling her about international adoption. Theres been a lot of German influence,and some of these kids are beautiful,very blond,or blue-eyed,or both. Nazis always have the last laugh, says the adoptive mother to Tassie.

But at the terrifying dark heart of the novel is a tragic accident from the past. In the way of such things,the tragedy from the past returns,to burden the present and demand more grief as its due. Tassie,observant and longing for answers,wonders whether tragedy has even become an effete indulgence of the better-off: Tragedies,I was coming to realise through my daily studies in the humanities both in and out of the classroom,were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society,full of sorrow and truth but without moral function. For understanding and for perspective,suffering required a butchers weighing.

Not a safe world for children. But,equally,it is children who hold the hope of redemption. The forgiveness of children was one of Gods sunny gifts, reflects a character in the novel. The problem,as the narrative reveals,is that it is so difficult to deserve that forgiveness.