Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center and 5 Minutes for Books Bookclub


About the book:
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.

My Review:
I read Everyone is Beautiful for the 5 Minutes for Books Book club. The link to the site is http://www.5minutesforbooks.com/
There will be several things going on there for the book club discussion today.

I liked the book. I laughed in many parts. Overall I enjoyed it. I am not married and have no children so it did not touch me as strongly as it did other women. Although it did seem very real. Any woman can identify with not feeling beautiful. One of the main theme's of the book is that everyone is really beautiful just not all in Hollywood's way. I did not understand what all the fuss was about the book before but now I do. I definitely recommend it to all women. :)


About the author:
Katherine Center is the author of The Bright Side of Disaster. She graduated from Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize, and received an MA in fiction from the University of Houston. She served as fiction co-editor for the literary magazine Gulf Coast, and her graduate thesis, Peepshow, a collection of stories, was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. A former freelance writer and teacher, she lives in Houston with her husband and two young children.

www.katherinecenter.com

3 comments:

morninglight mama said...

I know that I have been going on and on about this book, so I'm glad to know that you found something worthwhile in it! :) If you do someday find yourself mired in the world of early motherhood, maybe you can give it a re-read and see if you react in any different ways!

Thanks for participating!!

Unknown said...

Thanks for joining in.

It is interesting to hear your perspective as a woman without children. But I agree -- I think the dialogue and everything was very relatable regardless. And it was funny.

Nise' said...

I agree that everyone can relate to the definitions of what is beautiful!

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