Summary and Reviews of The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty

Media Reviews

Elle Make room on that shelf . . . for The Center of Everything.

Entertainment Weekly A winning first novel. A+

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The magic was spun by Mona Simpson in Anywhere But Here and by Alice Seybold in The Lovely Bones and it is spun again by Moriarty.

Arizona Republic The heart of the book is…Evelyn. She is funny, smart and fiercely observant.

Atlanta Journal Constitution The great strength of this debut novel is the wonderfully clear voice of its protagonist, Evelyn Buchnow…

Chicago Tribune Graceful and poignant.

Christian Science Moniter The secret to Moriarty's success is pitch-perfect voice and unfailing restraint.

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

Janet Maslin, The New York Times . . .a warm, beguiling book full of hard-won wisdom.

O Magazine Realistic and familiar as a summer day in Kansas -- brave and gritty, strong voiced and spare.

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

Time Out New York Absorbing and emotionally generous…there's no shortage of wry humor and evocative details of time and place.

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

Library Journal - Rachel Collins Moriarty builds an addictive and moving portrait of this poor, Midwestern girl in the Eighties, reminiscent of Dolores in Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone, so well realized that one forgets it is fiction and so infectious that one never wants to put it down, even after turning to the last page. Essential for fiction collections.

Kirkus Reviews ....while Moriarty is no fancy prose stylist, she listens carefully to the speech of her characters, and Evelyn and Tina's voices, especially, ring true without sounding dopey or sentimental. Among the plethora of first novels tracking preteen daughters of sorry single mothers, Moriarty's gutsy opener is hard not to like.

Publishers Weekly Moriarty deftly treads the line between adolescence and adulthood, and insecurity and self-assurance, offering a moving portrait of life in blue-collar middle America.

 Christina Schwartz This impressive debut is a marvelously satisfying story . . . Moriarty eschews tough questions . . . competing loves and loyalties of adolescence.