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Summary
Summary
"What a clear-eyed rendering of the grimy, exhausting, beautiful mess that is early motherhood! I laughed, winced in recognition, and cheered wholeheartedly (sometimes out loud) for Lanie as she struggles to learn how to love everyone enough and still give part of herself to herself."--Marisa de los Santos, author of Belong to Me
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.
Praise for Everyone Is Beautiful
"If you like novels with happy endings that will remind you of childhood fairy tales, then Katherine Center's Everyone is Beautiful is the perfect book . . . Bound to catch the sympathetic attention of women looking for stories of self-improvement on physical and emotional levels. This is a breezy read that glows, in part, because its characters bask in the sunny side of life." -- USA Today
"Endearing . . . Unpretentious, silly, and honest." -- People
" Everyone is Beautiful will make you laugh out loud, even as you wince in recognition." -- Free Lance Star
Author Notes
Katherine Center is a New York Times bestselling author. She started wrting in elementary school with her focus being on poems, essays, and stories. She won a creative writing scholarship in high school, and then went on to major in creative writing at Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize. At 22, she won a fellowship to the University of Houston¿s Creative Writing Program and moved home to Texas. She struggled for a decade with her writing before she wrote her first novel, The Bright Side of Disaster, which hit the bestseller lists.
Katherine's writing reflects her belief that joy is as important as sorrow. Her stories are all about finding ways to savor life's moments of grace. Her other title's include: How to Walk Away, Husband, and Happiness for Beginners. Her work has appeared in People, USA Today, Vanity Fair and Redbook.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Center's second novel after The Bright Side of Disaster is a keeper. Lanie has just moved her family from Texas to Cambridge, MA, so that her husband, Peter, can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But while Peter is enthusiastic about his new challenges, Lanie mourns the loss of her old house in Houston and struggles not to go insane with the lack of money and her three little boys running wild. Changes happen slowly for Lanie. After having three babies, she is carrying extra weight, but the high of alone time at her new gym is enthralling. Then her mother mails some old cameras to Lanie, who signs up for a photography course taught by the creepy but talented Nelson. As Lanie's weight goes down and her artistic skills go up, her life with Peter is shaken. Can her marriage handle her transformation? The challenges and hilarity of young family life, combined with Lanie's heart-wrenching search for herself, will have readers laughing and crying. For all popular fiction collections.-Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The day I decided to change my life, I was wearing sweatpants and an old oxford of Peter's with a coffee stain down the front. I hadn't showered because the whole family had slept in one motel room the night before, and it was all we could do to get back on the road without someone dropping the remote in the toilet or pooping on the floor. We had just driven across the country to start Peter's new job. Houston, Texas, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'd had the kids in our tenyear- old Subaru the whole drive, two car seats and a booster across the back. Alexander kept taking Toby's string cheese, and the baby, except when he was sleeping, was fussing. Peter drove the U-Haul on the theory that if it broke, he 'd know how to fix it. On the road, I was sure I had the short end of the stick, especially during the dog hours of Tennessee. But now Peter was hauling all our belongings up three flights of narrow stairs, and I was at the park, on a blanket in the late-afternoon shade, breast-feeding Baby Sam. Peter had to be hurting. Even with our new landlord helping him, it was taking all day. And I was just waiting for him to call on the cell phone when he was ready for us to come home. Or as close to home as a curtainless apartment stacked high with boxes could be. We 'd been at the park since midmorning, and we were running low on snacks. Alexander and Toby were galloping at top speed, as they always did. I'm not even sure they realized they were in a new park. They acted like we might as well have been at home, in Houston, the only place they'd ever lived. They acted like the last five days of driving hadn't even registered. I, in contrast, was aching with loss. I didn't like this park. Too clean, too brand-new, too perfect. The parks at home had character--monkey bars fashioned like cowboys, gnarled crape myrtle trunks for climbing, discarded Big Wheels with no seats. And we'd known them backward and forward--every tree knot, every mud hole, every kid. This park, today, felt forced. It was trying too hard. I surveyed the moms. Not one of them, I decided, was a person I wanted to meet. And just as I was disliking them all and even starting to pity them for having no idea what they were missing, park-wise, Toby-- my middle boy, my sandy-haired, blue-eyed, two-year-old flirt--watched a younger kid make a move for the truck in his hand, and then, unbelievably, grabbed that kid's forearm and bit it. The little boy screamed as Toby pulled the truck to his chest. "My truck!" Toby shouted. (He always pronounced "truck" like "fuck," but that was, perhaps, another issue.) And then, of course, all hell broke loose. I jumped up, startling the baby out of a nap and off my boob. I ran across the park, wailing baby on my shoulder, shirt unbuttoned, shouting, "Toby! No!" Toby saw my horrified face and instantly started to cry himself--though he was no match for the little kid he 'd bitten, who was now screaming like he was on fire. His mother, too, had sprinted from her perch, dropping her purse on the way, and was now holding him as if he'd been shot. "Is it bleeding?" she kept asking the boy. "Is it bleeding?" It was clearly not bleeding. Isn't that the number one rule of parenting? Don't Make Things Worse? All the other parents, meanwhile, had gathered around us to see what the heck was going on. My shirt was hanging open, the baby was still shrieking, and I remembered from one of those parenting books I used to read--back when I used to do that type of thing--that when a child bites, the parent of the biter must give attention to the bitee. I turned toward the Excerpted from Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel by Katherine Center All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.