Review Number Two

Everyone is Beautiful: A Novel by Katherine Center is my latest literary conquest. This novel is a nice quick read. I enjoyed the pace of the story and found myself truly understanding Lanie's situation. The book is full of familiar feelings and struggles. It aptly describes the push and pull of parenting small children. The book is full of contrasts that serve the author's purpose well: clean vs. dirty, orderly vs. chaotic, beauty vs. homeliness. If you are looking for a quick read that will also give you something to think about, this is your book.

Lanie feels as though she has lost herself in the everyday struggles of a stay-at-home mom. She laments: "What I needed so desperately, and did not have in my life, was something I could point to and say, "I did that." Something that was a direct reflection of me." Thus, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

As Lanie searches she also takes a long, hard look at marriage. How does marriage change after kids? How can those sweet children enrich their marriage rather than tax it? Lanie is trying "to find the passion that had been lost at the bottom of the toy bin for so long." Can her marriage survive the turmoils of parenthood? While this is certainly not new material for chick-lit, the dynamic of Peter being a struggling student does add its own twist to the discussion.

Can Lanie have "time set aside to strive for that impossible balance between excitement and exhaustion, between longing for and having, between giving yourself away and hanging on to yourself, between how things are and how they ought to be"? This quote sums the novel up concisely and accurately. Happy Reading!