| Lorrie Moore |
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| There are several strong plot strands in the novel and I wondered what had been your first idea - whether it was Tassie's story, Sarah and Edward's terrible back-story or, possibly, the adoption of a mixed race child? |
| At this point it's difficult to recall what came first--or if any one thing did at all. Usually a writer gets her energy from several narrative threads that have converged in the mind and set off feeble little sparks--nothing too dangerous. Certainly I had Tassie, Sarah, and Mary-Emma from the beginning, as well as Tassie's family at home. I wanted a governess novel but also a portrait of the American midwest that would animate what I think of as all the midwest's interesting contradictions and unexpectedness. |
| Tassie is a wonderful creation. She's at a stage in her life which most of us will recognise - when she is sometimes behind the gate on the stairs and sometimes firmly with the grown-ups downstairs. What made you want to write about her? |
| I wanted a young woman who was simultaneously rejecting the place she'd grown up and returning to it in some way--but I wanted to follow her through a very scenic route. She is twenty, which is an adult, but she turns twenty-one in the course of the novel which in the US is the official age of adulthood. |
| The novel begins in the autumn of 2001, soon after 9/11. Why did you set it in this very particular period? |
| It takes place mostly in the year 2002, between 9/11 and the Iraq War. I thought that was a very interesting year in history, full of a kind of sinister silence and passivity. |
| Which books would you like to see on the shelf next to A GATE AT THE STAIRS? |
| Well, I alphabetize my books, so on one side would be Brian Moore and on the other side would be Susanna Moore. That is, if, ideally, my house were in order. |
| Which authors have influenced your writing? |
| Oh, I hope all of them, but I would hate to name names lest the living ones feel blamed. |
| Lorrie Moore |
