Customer Reviews

The Center of Everything

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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With several historical references, even if they're only as far back as the 1980s, the story is believable and well told.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.

Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

I was quite surprised to read that the previous reviewer found this book "depressing", I found it completely inspiring...my daughter saw this book in SEVENTEEN Magazine and HAD to have it...she loved it so much that I read it as well....my husband is reading it now, too...I wish this book had been around when I was growing up....the main character, Evelyn, does face many hardships, and Moriarty completely nails what it feels like to live on the outskirts of nowhereville, but she learns through trial and error that your choices define you more than your circumstances....the voice of Evelyn rings so true, and I love that the mother, Tina, is neither a saint nor a sinner...details about the 1980's, from a child's perspective, bring the story to life...I am going to recommend this book to everyone...anyone who feels that life isn't always fair will find this book inspiring....very well written, apparently this is her first novel, and I would love to read more of her work.

A quick read, this book takes us into the lives of essentially good people who struggle to become more than their circumstances and histroy might dictate. Each, in their own way, achieves a measure of success, although it is likely that Evelyn will be the only one who is ultimately able to recognize and nurture a personal center that will allow her to fully blossom. I would have liked to have seen greater development of at least some of the many significant events and difficulties that beset this Kansas community. Possibly this was intentional, allowing the reader to enter into the resolution in a less directive manner. Laura Moriarity is a promising writer with a knack for protraying the human condition in a positive and hopeful light, emphasizing again the importance of relationship and compassion for each person.

I picked up this book because of the Mockingbird comparison on the back of the book jacket. Although I don't consider it as good as Mockingbird, the narration is similar. I loved Evelyn from the start; her voice was fresh and most of all, honest. Her relationship with her struggling mother was sad, but so real. One thing I really liked about this novel was that it didn't end up 'happily ever after' for the characters...the ending was a bit abrupt and I was a little angry that it didn't tie up all loose ends, but that's life. Even though there wasn't a 'happily ever after' theme here, the reader gets the impression that Evelyn is going to choose a path completely different than her mother's. I found myself laughing at the references to the '80s and I could identify with a lot of Evelyn's viewpoints on the world around her (her internal conflict over the religion vs. evolution debate, for example). I did think that her voice matured throughout the novel, her growth apparent in the scene with her in Travis' car toward the end of the novel. This is a novel worth reading, appropriate for the teenager as well as the adult reader.

Everyone is saying this has the distinct voice of To Kill a Mockingbird and it really is very similar. The story is not really like Mockingbird but the narrative perspective is told in the same way by Evelyn Bucknow. The book covers eight years of Evelyn's adolescence--from 10 years onto her graduation from high school. Her mother is constantly trying to make ends meet financially, and she loves Evelyn deeply. There is a great schism in the family because Tina, Evelyn's mother, had her out of wedlock. Tina's parents are extreme fundamentalists that will not let her forget her past. When Tina becomes pregnant again with a married man's baby, the problems start all over again, and Evelyn's grandmother, Eileen, is the only family that will talk to them.

Evelyn's brother, Samuel, is born prematurely and it is soon obvious that he is mentally handicapped. Tina's role in the book changes to constant caretaker of Samuel, and Evelyn moves into her teenage years nearly alone. Her grandmother begins taking her to church, and Evelyn finds some answers there... yet she struggles with questions when one of her favorite teachers in school, Ms. Jenkins, becomes the target of a smear campaign by the fundamentalists for teaching evolution to the children. Evelyn's struggle to decide whether to side with her grandmother and the "nice people at the church" or her teacher shows exactly how Evelyn is certainly in the center of everything.

The Center of Everything brings together many situations that Evelyn must confront--and she is a strong girl who has a very wise voice for someone so young.

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.

Whereas Dorothy wanted to get out of Kansas and landed up in Oz, Evelyn Bucknow thinks Kansas is at the center of everything. At age 10, the only problem in her otherwise perfect world is her mother's ineptitude and inability to hold her own life together, much less that of her impressionable daughter. This lovely story follows Evelyn on the teetery see-saw path between childhood and young adulthood with warmth, sincerity, and hope, deftly offering a cameo look at middle-class life smack dab in the middle of America.

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."

This is not a book I would ordinarly pick up...I only read it after a friend strongly recommended it. I loved it! The main character, Evelyn, has a wonderful wry sense of humor. Nice, wonderful, warm read. I look forward to Laura Moriarity's next book.

I usually avoid books featuring child narrators like the plague, but when I recently picked up The Center of Everything, the writing was so winsome and Evelyn and her mother's precarious situation so compelling that I kept reading. And I'm so glad I did, because I got a lot more than I bargained for: The Center of Everything is a novel that I actively looked forward to returning to every night so I could see what the characters were up to, and toward the end I rationed out the pages so I could stay in Moriarty's Kerrville, Kansas a while longer. The character of Tina is a particular triumph; Moriarty gives her wit and warmth and shatters preconceptions about welfare mothers while remaining true to situation. Wise and compassionate and laugh-aloud funny, The Center of Everything is a book to be treasured and reread. Wonderful novel.