The Center of Everything

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Summary: "Center" captures emerging identity and thwarted teen love
Review: Laura Moriarty's enthralling debut novel, a coming-of-age narrative which focuses on the intellectual, social and emotional turmoil a marginalized teen encounters, is so good, so true that it is difficult to decide what aspect of her writing is most deserving of praise. "The Center of Everything" is suffused with a resonant compassion and gentle wisdom, and Moriarity's ability to discern the spark of humanity in each of her characters invests them with not only a believable humanity, but with the reader's identification with their strengths and flaws. This is a novel whose exploration of thwarted identities, derailed love and resolute commitments reminds us that the center of our attention need not be on glamorous cities like New York or Los Angeles, but in small, unremarkable towns like Kerrville, Kansas. There, under the sure-handed guidance of Ms. Moriarty, the reader discovers the genuine underpinnings of family, romantic longing and resolve.

At first glance, the protagonist of "Center," Evelyn Bucknow has little hope of bucking the odds of a dreary life. Her mother, bitterly estranged from her father, has never been forgiven by him for giving birth to Evelyn out of wedlock. Although Evelyn cannot understand why her grandfather refers to her mother Tina as a "horse," Tina well understands the sexual aspersion embedded in that derogatory condemnation. Compounding her life's downward spiral, Tina becomes pregnant, fails a welfare interview and seems destined to be imprisoned by both material and spiritual poverty.

Yet it is Evelyn's tenacity, resiliency and capacity to endure setbacks which set the tone for the novel. Evelyn refuses to accept the sterile vastness of the Kansas landscape as the metaphor of her life. She rebels in ways that surprise and validate her growing independence and frustration with a compromised life. And in her rebellion, she grows as a young woman. Early adolescent answers spawn questions; certainties produce doubts. Her stunted living environment ironically compels her to open her mind; she finds liberation in school while those closest to her -- her tragically stagnating mother, her religiously rigid grandmother, her sexually precocious friend -- slowly grasp the consequences of marginalizing the mind.

Evelyn's idiosyncrasies humanize her. Her unrequited romantic longings, her immersion and emergence as a born-again Christian, her repudiation, reconsideration reconnection with her mother reveal a young woman who is not just frustrated by contradictions, but liberated by them. Against her own wishes, she emerges larger than life.

Flavored by realistic dialogue, marked by sensitive characterization and enhanced by realistic portraits of single motherhood, small-town disillusion and family friction, "The Center of Everything" signals the emergence of Laura Moriarty as a voice to be honored.

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Summary: A sweet lil nugget
Review: Moriarty shines with this well written and heartfelt debut.A poignant comming of age tale layered with metaphor and insight.And thankfully not choked with the syrup that usually accompanies such fair. Yes, this is like a contemporary Mockingbird!

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Summary: Great read
Review: Really enjoyed this book - it kept my attention and I was still thinking about the characters a few days later. I only wished it were longer so I could keep reading it :-)

Very well written and inciteful

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Summary: warm story well told
Review: The Center of Everything follows the main character Evelyn from ten to her late teens in small town Kansas. She lives with her unmarried mother and then later her mentally handicapped brother while also spending a lot of time with her fundamentalist grandmother and her two best friends Travis and Deena.
The book's premise is a familiar one and lends itself toward a pedestrian trip over well-worn territory, but while there are some flat or awkward moments, for the most part Moriarty transcends the genre. The biggest reason for this is that the author's characters are fully three-dimensional, seemingly simple on the surface but much more complex in action and response. Deena as the pretty but not-too-bright girl; Travis as the warm-hearted juvenile delinquent; Eileen as the strict fundamentalist grandmother. All of these could easily have become caricature and to be honest, there were a few times they edged close, mostly in the beginning. Thankfully, Moriarty managed to skirt those dangers and allowed the characters to deepen as the book went on.
As for the two main characters, Evelyn and her mother, they stand out for the depth of their emotions and voices. The mother, Tina, deals with the scorn of both the town and her own father (shown in a wonderfully oblique fashion early on when Evelyn is too young and naive to recognize what she is reporting to the reader), the consequences of her own bad decisions, and the seeming hopelessness of her son's handicap. We see her warts and all and though sometimes we may want to shake her, you can't help but root for her through it all or feel for her in the worst moments.
The same is true for Evelyn, whose voice smoothly and winningly carries the novel. Moriarty's teens speak and think like teens and not like adults imagine them thinking, a refreshing change from too much stilted teen dialogue or bad slang in other coming-of-age books. And while Evelyn is of course more eloquent than the typical girl her age (it is a novel after all), the disconnect is rarely if ever distracting. There are some just beautifully painful teen scenes in this book, such as the moment when Evelyn realizes the boy she like is attracted to Deena. Moriarty captures this time of life vividly and realistically.
Sometimes the historical context is a bit awkward--references to Reagan for instance or to the TV movie The Day After--, Moriarty uses them to make connections or insights that are probably best made through the characters themselves rather than set pieces like these, but these are small flaws in a book that endears the reader to its narrator and leaves you sorry to leave her behind.

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Summary: Finding your own true center
Review: The Center of Everything is a beautiful study of the human life in motion. We watch as Evelyn Bucknow rises above her poverty-stricken life to find her own true center. A well-crafted adolescent voice reminds us what it takes for the human spirit to survive, to challenge, to explore, and to just "be." Evelyn initially sees herself at the center of everything in small town Kerrville. The only world she knows, we watch and quietly celebrate as her perceptions of herself and the world change as she grows and matures. She can feel that "in her head, things are chang[ing]," as she outgrows her environment and her own, irresponsible mother-and although she belongs "to the same genus, [she realizes she is not] the same species." Her growing realization that "the Earth [and she} aren't really in the middle" is just a part of her own beautiful evolution. Five stars to Moriarty, who works to remind us that we all must evolve as human beings, for that is the nature of our existence-and that "anything can come out of the soil at all."


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Summary: emotionally riveting
Review: The Center of Everything is one of those rare coming of age novels full of emotional pathos and personal growth that somehow touches a deep nerve within, especially if you were about the same age in the Reagan era 80's as protagonist Evelyn Bucknow. It is a novel about a smart girl living in a small Kansas town with her overwhelmingly depressed, trampy "welfare queen" mother searching for a better path in life than the path her mother chose. Told from Evelyn's perspective between the ages of 10 through 18, the first half of the novel focuses on her increasingly strained relationship with her somewhat unattentive mother. When Evelyn reaches the breaking point with her mother and "a black line" is drawn between them, the novel then focuses on Evelyn's fractured friendships, painfully unrequited love and her desire to improve the quality of her life. Moriarty's prose is thoughtful and breezy with a touch of child-like innocence. The characters are achingly real keeping you riveted to the page not from suspense but from a desire to get to know them better. You'll find your emotions run high as you love/hate many of the characters, especially Evelyn's mother. Touching and poignant, sad but never sappy The Center of Everything is a believable account of a girl's search for herself and her place in the world.

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Summary: Needs its own voice
Review: The story was good, but it never felt like the author owned it. It came across more like an attempt to recreate the better sections of "WHITE OLEANDER" and "MY FRACTURED LIFE" and weave them together. Why not just buy those two books instead?

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Summary: An Impressive Debut Novel and a Perfect Book Club Choice
Review: The title of Laura Moriarty's impressive debut novel THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING refers to the story's Kansas setting: "If you look at a map of the world, the United States is usually right in the middle, and Kansas is in the middle of that. So right here where we are, maybe this very stretch of highway we are driving on, is the exact center of the whole world, what everything else spirals out from." The title, however, could just as easily apply to its young narrator, Evelyn. So often, Evelyn is the calm heart at the center of the crazy events swirling around her, quietly observing and commenting on everything that happens but rarely sucked into these everyday dramas.

Evelyn is 10 at the novel's opening. Gifted at school but still quite naive about the world, Evelyn often records innocent observations that are unintentionally funny. Down-to-earth Evelyn is particularly bewildered by her scatterbrained and childlike mother, Tina. Estranged from her father and unable to hold down a job, Tina often seems less grown up than her serious-minded daughter. When Tina's failed affair with her married boss results in a pregnancy, Tina balances on the verge of depression, particularly when the baby turns out to be severely retarded. Against the backdrop of Tina's crises, Evelyn is quietly struggling with her own day-to-day trials, from competing in the state science fair to envying the other girls' Ocean Pacific sweatshirts and designer jeans when Tina can't even provide Evelyn with shoes that fit.

Throughout the novel, Evelyn secretly adores Travis, the bad-boy-next-door at her run-down apartment complex. But when Travis falls hard for Evelyn's beautiful best friend, Deena, Evelyn must repress her desires even as she watches Travis and Deena head toward a very different fate from the one that awaits her. As Evelyn matures, she struggles to define herself apart from her family and her secret crush. Lacking guidance from her mother and encouraged by her grandmother, Evelyn becomes active in a local evangelical Christian church.

As she grows older, though, her increasing interest in science --- particularly biology --- clashes with her religious beliefs when a conflict over teaching evolution threatens to tear her small town apart. Mentored by two idealistic, outsider teachers, Evelyn quietly excels at school and, as she graduates from high school at the novel's end, begins to envision a life outside her small Kansas town.

Not coincidentally, the eight years that THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING spans are also the eight years of the Reagan administration. The novel brilliantly brings the 1980s to life, not only through carefully placed pop culture references but also through subtle commentaries on the era's politics. When Tina is forced to go on welfare, young Evelyn is mortified by the thought of her mother joining the rank of "welfare queens." When two older teens offer her marijuana, Nancy Reagan's advice to "Just Say No" resounds in Evelyn's mind. Many of the key economic, political, and social dilemmas of the Reagan era are dramatized here in clever but thought-provoking ways.

THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age novel, family drama, and political commentary rolled into one. It would be a perfect book club choice, particularly for a mother-daughter book club, and with its carefully drawn adolescent narrator, it will appeal to teens as well as to their parents.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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Summary: A fresh voice. Outstanding.
Review: The writing is excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Through the fresh voice of a wise young girl, Evelyn Bucknow, her life in the state of Kansas and all the supporting characters surrounding her come alive. She is indeed the center of everything and we immediately respect her--especially her ability to rise above very unfortunate circumstances. No matter how eccentric, bizarre or pathetic the people in her life are, we see them through her loving eyes. Even characters that might be considered villains, her proud and bitter mother, the snobby classmate and her equally snobby sidekick for example, are all presented with redeeming qualities.

With several historical references, even if they're only as far back as the 1980s, the story is believable and well told. We've all shared many of Evelyn's thoughts while coming of age. A quick read with exceptional attention to detail, I think it's well worth your time.

Submitted by the author of "I'm Living Your Dream Life."

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Summary: The Center of a Letdown
Review: This book was good, I really liked it in many parts. It had an interesting story without sticking to a strict plot the entire time. But, for me the ending was horrible. I won't give it away for anyone who will read the book (and it isn't bad if you don't mind being letdown), but the ending didn't feel like an ending. And not in a good way like it left and air of mystery, more like it was just cut off. The only way it could be redeemed would be if there was a sequel.