The Center of Everything (Laura Moriarty)
This quick, easy read was something that I needed after the long haul of Sacred Hunger, so quick I finished it in a few days and so easy that I’d really classify it as young adult/teen reading. It is, of course, about a teenager living in Kansas — aren’t all teens at “the center of everything,” at the center of their own universes? In the standard after-school-special fashion, Evelyn has to make the tough but typical choices about what to believe, who to emulate, how to be true to herself and what she really wants out of life.
Though I found the novel lukewarm in general, I did enjoy the comparison between the main character and some of her friends who make different (read: not so great) decisions, which accurately portrayed how little things (or things you think are small potatoes) you do in your teens can change your entire life. That the main character emerges unscathed from the morass of high school is depicted as a mixture of brains and luck, which is really what it takes get through those stormy years. At least, so it seems to me in hindsight. I often think that if I was given another set of circumstances or thrown a curve ball or two, it would have been very, very easy to stumble off a cliff, changing my life as I know it. As a teen, you’re really unaware about how precarious it all is and, again, how much pure luck factors into things.
This little teen tale will soon disappear from my brain as quickly as it was absorbed, I’m sure, but it was just what the doctor ordered: Like a sorbet between courses, easy reading sometimes cleanses the palate, making reading fun again after a particularly heavy tome. Not every book has to be meaningful or unique. Sometimes you just want to hear a story, any story, just to reawaken your joy of books.
Books, books, books. So many books.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading
Fiction |