A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Published 2010 · 336 pages · 84,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is A Gate at the Stairs to read?
A Gate at the Stairs scores 49 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Moore's precise prose with Midwestern and academic vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Long, wry sentences following Tassie's consciousness.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Questions of race, class, and post-9/11 America.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with observation and social detail.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Tassie's limited perspective means truths emerge slowly.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The gate, the adoption, the basement carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Moore's wit maintains ironic distance throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Tragedies accumulate but Tassie's future uncertain.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- First-person narrative with mounting revelations.
How A Gate at the Stairs is regarded
A Gate at the Stairs holds a literary regard score of 54 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.