LORRIE MOORE - read this

LORRIE MOORE - A GATE AT THE STAIRS

It's new, it's undemonstrative, and it's very very good for navel-gazers like me. The quiet insights offered by this book more than outweigh a dozen bombastic thrillers or conventional romances. She manipulates you surefootedly whilst letting you share intimately in what's going on. No knock-out blows from this book until somewhere through the second half when you suddenly realise that you've been hit by one literary punch after another and the author is about to poleaxe you. And she does. Seriously, in the guise of a slow-moving study of middle-class manners, a really important commentary on life takes shape and eventually emerges. She makes some sense of loss and bewilderment and at least looks at them in the face without drama and wallowing. Wry little nod to Charlotte Bronte at the end should make you smile too.

You can get this in the sale at Audible.com if, like me, you're better at listening than conventional reading.