A Slow-Blooming Bud: Lorrie Moore

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FOR NEARLY 25 YEARS, author Lorrie Moore has been regaling readers with mischievous stories that find comedy in tragedy and vice versa. Her fourth novel, "The Gate at the Stairs," follows a young narrator named Tassie as she takes a job as an au pair for an eccentric and evasive couple. We put Moore on the spot (via e-mail) to discuss this long-gestating work, which is one of her best.

» EXPRESS: You've been working on this novel for nearly 10 years now. What took so long?
» MOORE: I was captured by space aliens and then a sort of Stockholm syndrome ensued. I have a list of prosaic reasons and excuses, such as being a working, single, book-reviewing mom, but I grow vaguely but perceptibly hysterical when I recite them, so I've decided to go with the space alien tale.

» EXPRESS: There are a lot of precise botanical descriptions in the novel.
» MOORE: I've always loved flowers, and when I've had time in life, I've gardened. ... Sometimes I would do research that merely consisted of trespassing — that is, just driving in the country and pulling into people's driveways and looking around.

» EXPRESS: What does a novel offer you as a writer that a short story doesn't?
» MOORE: A novel provides a long companionable relationship, and I can see why novelists love writing them, always returning to the same voice and characters, and keeping company with them. Short stories have a busier urgency to the writing of them. The good thing about stories is that if you begin to find your characters a little irritating, you can be done with them faster.

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Thu., Sept. 24, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness-UDC)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photo by Linda Nylind