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"The Center of Everything" by Laura Moriarty
Synopsis
A dazzling debut in the tradition of Jane Hamilton and Mona Simpson.
In Laura Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself. Offering an affecting portrayal of a troubled mother/daughter relationship, one in which the daughter is very often expected to play the role of the adult, the novel also gives readers a searing rendering of the claustrophobia of small town midwestern life, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. Evelyn must come to terms with the heartbreaking lesson of first love -- that not all loves are meant to be -- and determine who she is and who she wants to be. Stuck in the middle of Kansas, between best friends, and in the midst of her mother's love, Evelyn finds herself . . . in The Center of Everything.

Time Out New York
Moriarty creates empathetic, engaging characters and situations.

San Diego Union Tribune
Teriffic…. Moriarty has steady confidence…expertly wringing poignancy from…young lives…. A deeply satisfying novel.

Denver Post & Rocky Mountain Ne
Lively and endearing… complete tour of…conflicts between mother and daughter, as well as between the narrator's hopes and dreams.

Elle Magazine
Intelligent and charming debut novel.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Moriarty's enchanting novel passes too quickly.

USA Today
It's not easy to build a novel around a personality, but Moriarty does it well. — Anne Stephenson

The New York Times
Laura Moriarty's debut novel has the makings of something wearily familiar: the Midwestern mother-daughter coming-of-age story, featuring at least one episode in which Mom leaves home looking like a movie star but winds up collapsing in tears. Happily, Ms. Moriarty's artful, enveloping book is a lot more interesting than its genre initially suggests. It traces not only stormy adolescence, but also the essential stages of Evelyn's moral and intellectual evolution. — Janet Maslin