LORRIE MOORE IS MESMERIZING. Reading her recent book has put me in a sort of trance-like state, going about my business, all the while thinking about who we are and how we got there, post 9/11. The book is called A Gate at the Stairs (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), and it takes place in the Midwest, and starts quietly, gently inducing this state of transit to real thought in the most subtle of writerly gestures, posing the topics to us as illustrated in a thorny sisterhood between some women and one child.

Barely mentioning the real events of the tragic day, Moore takes on the smallest stuff and in doing so, rips off the tourniquet on our most heartfelt selves, causing me to pump some real energy into how I really feel about racism, fear, and the suspicion of others based on how they look and what they say.

Brilliantly executed, it is a difficult book to read. It is. And well worth it. As you may remember, here at TSP we love Lorrie Moore, and have pretty much been waiting by the bookshop door for this, her first novel in fifteen years. And we’re grateful she took her time. Because it’s causing me to take mine to consider–and reconsider–how I feel about who I try to be.

Write on, Lorrie. You’re a marvel.

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JANUARY 13th brought us the birthday of Lorrie Moore, short-story writer and author of one of the greatest coming-of-age novels featuring girl-team-friendship ever written, the wondrous, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Seeing her recently referred to in The Guardian (of London) as “the finest short story writer in America today,” I laughed out loud with joy. It’s true. If there is a snappier writer of fiction, I can’t think of her.

Full disclosure is that we attended St. Lawrence University at the same time, where she recently returned to receive a much-deserved honorary degree, and where I am a trustee. Sometimes a fairly staid event, where speeches can be un-memorable, this graduation was just around the time that the TV show Friends was going off the air, and using the news peg of the sit-com’s demise, in her remarks, Moore warned the graduating seniors that those characters are “not your friends,” advising the newly minted job-seeking graduates and the parents, faculty and board that there is more wisdom to be gotten from “drinking gin straight from the bottle than from watching television.”

Which is just a peek into why any friend-seeking sister might like to read her novel, as well as her many collections of stories. Happy birthday, Lorrie. Keep talking, keep writing.

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