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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Books Currently Readable

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 12:25 PM

There is a new story by Lorrie Moore in the New Yorker this week. If you're unfamiliar with her, Lorrie Moore is one of the best American short story authors in the business today, perhaps only after Amy Hempel.

I didn’t know anything about adoption. I’d known only one adopted girl when I was growing up, Becky Sussluch, who at sixteen was spoiled and beautiful and having an affair with a mussed and handsome student teacher whom I myself had a crush on. In general, I thought of adoption much as I thought of most things in life: uneasily. Adoption seemed both a cruel joke and a lovely daydream—a nice way of avoiding the blood and pain of giving birth, or, from a child’s perspective, a realized fantasy of your parents not really being your parents. Your genes could thrust one arm in the air and pump up and down. Yes! You were not actually related to them!

“Congratulations,” I murmured now to Sarah. Was that what one said?

The story—about Chinese food, the Midwest, and child care—is at once warm and lonely and observant, and you should read it. Lorrie Moore will be publishing a novel titled Gate at the Stairs this September. It'll be the first book of original fiction she's published since 1998, and the first novel since 1994.

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Yay! I adore Lorrie Moore, and was just exclaiming at the bookstore this weekend how sad I was that I had nothing left of hers to read. Thanks for posting this!

Posted by keenan on June 30, 2009 at 1:00 PM

That was wonderful, thank you.

Posted by Aislinn on June 30, 2009 at 1:58 PM

I always feel protective of artists I've had contact with, and/ or noticed while they were in the early stages of now impressive careers. Lorrie Moore was the writer in residence at Lebanon Valley College while I was a student there in the early 90s, and when I opened my latest New Yorker and saw her name, I got a little thrill. Thanks for spreading the good news!

Posted by Fangdoc on June 30, 2009 at 8:56 PM

I will try to actually read this story. Usually when I'm going through my New Yorker and I get to the fiction, I glance at it and then skip it, because I always have the impression that most short stories in the New Yorker are about dissatisfied mid-40s white men with annoyingly weird names having sex with dull, one-dimensional women they don't really like (and/or their dissatisfied middle-aged white ex-wives). This one sounds much better than that. I like stories where interesting stuff happens.

Posted by Phiadria on July 1, 2009 at 11:16 AM

The college town of Troy was known as the "Athens of the Midwest." Hahahahahaha -- nobody mixes poignant with funny like Lorrie Moore.

Posted by Laura Osprey on July 10, 2009 at 6:45 AM