The Locked Staircase

In 2001, America is trying to recover from the tragedy of September 11. Twenty-year-old Tessie Keltyn, the daughter of a farmer from the countryside, enrolls in a prestigious university, where she faces cultural shock and an uneven battle with Chaucer... and Simone de Beauvoir. To earn some extra money, she takes a job as a nanny for a family that seems extraordinary and intriguingly mysterious. The more Tessie becomes involved in the dramas of these people, the further she distances herself from her aging parents and younger brother, a lonely and bewildered teenager considering volunteering for the army after school. 

“The Locked Staircase” is a bleak, piercing novel by Lorrie Moore about the cruelties of growing up, the poison of hypocrisy, and a society unraveling at the seams, gripped by paranoia, apathy, and a desperate search for meaning in everyday life in the shadow of a great catastrophe.