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.

Moore’s 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, Tassie’s 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. Tassie’s employer urges her to be careful about it. “I don’t want her tumbling down... Babygate! Now there’s 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 Tassie’s brother, who gets his information from the movies. “And sometimes they get stationed in hot, edgy places and start to want one.”

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