I'm reading a book called A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, and I'm about one hundred pages in when I find Darr tonight to tell him how much it sucks because one minute I'm really enjoying it and the next it completely flounders. As the reader I end up lost and unsure of the text. Is it over my head and I'm missing some vital piece or is the author doing a shitty job at keeping up some semblance of continuity and pace? And I'm in the process of asking Darr if I should just give up because with another two hundred plus pages to go I'm starting to feel as if life is too dang short to spend on this piece of not great literature when I hop on Google and read this from a review of the book in the NYT:
"And never mind the narrative stumbles this novel takes along the way to its searing conclusion..."
"If Ms. Moore, who started out as a short-story writer, demonstrates some difficulty here in steering the big plot machinery of a novel, she is able to compensate for this by thoroughly immersing the reader in her characters' daily existences."
Okay, so it wasn't all in my head. And if it does indeed have a "searing conclusion" and the difficulty I have reading the story isn't because I'm deficient as a reader I guess I'll keep on reading. I just may occasionally break from it to read something that is less taxing.
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