Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel [Hardcover]

Katherine Center (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2009

Lanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in the Northeast. She’s left behind family, friends, and a comfortable life–all so her husband can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But somewhere in the eye of her personal hurricane, it hits Lanie that she once had dreams too. If only she could remember what they were.

These days, Lanie always seems to rank herself dead last–and when another mom accidentally criticizes her appearance, it’s the final straw. Fifteen years, three babies, and more pounds than she’s willing to count since the day she said “I do,” Lanie longs desperately to feel like her old self again. It’s time to rise up, fish her moxie out of the diaper pail, and find the woman she was before motherhood capsized her entire existence.

Lanie sets change in motion–joining a gym, signing up for photography classes, and finding a new best friend. But she also creates waves that come to threaten her whole life. In the end, Lanie must figure out once and for all how to find herself without losing everything else in the process.

Katherine Center’s Everyone Is Beautiful is a hugely entertaining, poignant, and charming new novel about what happens after happily ever after: how a woman learns to fall in love with her husband–and her entire life–all over again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Lanie Coates moves from Houston to Cambridge, Mass., with her musician husband, Peter, she loses her support system and quickly becomes overwhelmed by her three small boys and a self-image that's sagging both literally and figuratively. In this agreeable mom-lit entry from the author of The Bright Side of Disaster, Lanie, a former painter, finds beauty in everyone but herself, and especially adores Peter, even though the two of them seem to be drifting apart. The early chapters nearly sink beneath the weight of routine housekeeping details and scenes describing the children's bodily functions and fascination with their body parts, matters most parents have experienced, but which don't necessarily make for great fiction. However, as Lanie begins to find herself through a newfound passion for photography, the story gains traction, and the tension grows as her photography teacher turns out to be a smitten kitten. Like real-life marriage with children, this book offers enough sparkling moments to compensate for the tedium. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Everything in Lainie Coates’ life is changing. Her husband receives a scholarship to a prestigious music school, so the family moves from her native Houston to Cambridge, Massachusetts. While Peter is involved with his studies, Lainie feels lost and alienated caring for her three young sons until she meets Amanda, an acquaintance from high school, at a local park. Lainie is at her frumpiest—in sweatpants, still carrying the weight from her baby—when a stranger asks when her baby is due. Mortified, she lies. How does one explain her error to gorgeous Amanda with her perfect daughter? This embarrassing incident starts Lainie on the path to her own self-discovery, that is, if she can find the time and the outlet. Center takes a woman at her most vulnerable time and sets her on a journey to find herself without losing what she holds most dear in a superbly written novel filled with unique and resonant characters. --Patty Engelmann

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition edition (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400066433
• ISBN-13: 978-1400066438
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #431,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Katherine Center' s second novel, Everyone Is Beautiful, was featured in Redbook, People magazine and USA Today. Kirkus Reviews likens it to the 1950s motherhood classic Please Don't Eat the Daisies, and says, "Center 's breezy style invites the reader to commiserate, laughing all the way." Booklist calls it "a superbly written novel filled with unique and resonant characters."

Katherine's first novel, The Bright Side of Disaster, was featured in People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, the Houston Chronicle, and the Dallas Morning News, among others. BookPage named Katherine one of seven new writers to watch, and the paperback of Bright Side was a Breakout Title at Target. Bright Side was also optioned last fall by Varsity Pictures.

Katherine recently published an essay in Real Simple Family and has another in Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers on the Mother-Daughter Bond. She has just turned in her third novel, Get Lucky, and is starting on a fourth. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and two young children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read!, February 19, 2009

By 

Tender Moon (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel (Hardcover)

A wonderfully written, laugh out loud book about life, love, and motherhood. I don't think there's a mother alive who won't be able to identify in some way.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fell a bit flat, June 15, 2009

By 

K. Demos (PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel (Hardcover)

Eh. I know I'm supposed to be this book's target audience as a young mother who's experienced living across the country from my family and home, but I found the characters, especially the heroine, annoying. I also think the author had too many things that she was trying to accomplish with this book. She clearly wanted to express a need for passion as well as the concept that everyone is beautiful in their own way. But they both seemed to fall flat for me. There was a comfort/trust level amongst the characters that seemed to be lacking, even in the most intimate of relationships. Which ended up leading to a lack of communication, which is admittedly one of my biggest pet peeves.

My opinion may be a bit colored by the fact that, at this point in my life, I read to get away from my everyday life, so reading about a stressed-out mom and a couple who isn't connecting properly due to having small children wasn't really what I needed. Though there were definitely points where I could totally relate to the mother and her relationships. But instead of nodding my head in agreement and feeling comforted that I wasn't alone, I ended up feeling sad for the isolation that so many of us experience as parents.

Maybe I would have liked it better at a different point in my life? I don't know. I just wouldn't necessarily recommend it, especially to my stressed-out parent friends.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars honest, wise, and hysterically funny, February 17, 2009

By 

Brené Brown (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel (Hardcover)

Katherine Center's writing is so honest that I spent a lot of time wincing and thinking "I'm so glad it's not just me." The book is also so funny that I found myself laughing hysterically in almost every chapter (which is rare for me).

Everyone is Beautiful is for every woman who has ever struggled to find, hold on to, and nurture authenticity in the midst of that wild, messy, wonderful thing called motherhood.

This is the perfect book club book. It's also the kind of book that you hand to a close friend and grin when you say, "I think you'll relate."