LORRIE MOORE IS ONE OF those writers who seems to shift whichever way you look at her. She’s the archetypal “writer’s writer”, acclaimed by her peers and a serious shoulder-to-the-wheel artist who, we sense, never forces the work, lets it come, and publishes slowly as a result. (In four decades there have been four slim novels and four even slimmer collections of stories.)
But she is also a reader’s writer, with a following well beyond cult level and an absolute commitment to giving the reader a pleasure on every page. Typically this pleasure comes in the form of wit: she is a very funny writer, but — that shift again — also one whose emotional content can be so intense as to border on sentimentality, without ever quite slipping over.
And…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2023