Years ago I gave a friend a book of short stories called Self Help by Lorrie Moore.  She liked it so much she decided to read it aloud to a friend who was dying of cancer. 

Every day, she read a little bit to this woman until they finished it. 

Along the way, they laughed.  They cried.  They were entertained.  Startled, I think, too.

My friend said later it was one of the most moving and meaningful things she ever did for her friend, who died soon after that. 

I tell that story to indicate just how much one book, in one isolated setting, can make a difference.  No press; no politics.  Pretty cool!

Well, flash forward a number of years since then, and now that same Lorrie Moore is out with a new novel, A Gate at the Stairs (Alfred A. Knopf, $25) -- which is already moving readers and critics alike.  It's a beautifully, precisely told coming-of-age story set in the post 9/11 midwest.  It's filled with surprises.

As interesting as the story is, Moore's language is perhaps even more delicious.

How about this passage:  "Blasts from the past were like the rooms one entered and reentered in dreams:  they would not stay nailed down.  When you returned to them, they had changed—they suddenly had more space or a tilt or a door that had not been there before.  New people were milling around, the floors undulated, and the sun shone newly, strangely in the windows, or through the now blasted-open ceiling, or else it shone not at all, as if having fled the sky."

Have you seen our exclusive interview with Moore in the latest issue of Reader's Digest?  Check out p. 26 of the September issue.  Among other things, she tells us what she's reading, where she's surfing, and what she's watching.

And pick up a copy of A Gate at the Stairs, her first book since 1998.  Settle in for her wry, sharp, unique view of people and the world, and her sorcery with the English language.