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Book Review: Everyone is Beautiful, by Katherine Center, published by Ballantine Books, 2009

Available in hardback February 17.

For any mom who has ever found herself on day two of going shower-less; who has ever accidentally flashed her nursing bra in public; who has ever wondered for a second too long why the kids were so quiet, and found them swimming in shaving cream in the bathtub; who has ever wondered how many years until the kids stay quiet long enough for her to have a real and meaningful conversation with her husband; who has ever wondered if that husband and you can ever even look at each other with passion again, this one is for you.

Everyone is Beautiful, the second  novel by Katherine Center (whose debut, The Bright Side of Disaster, was reviewed here last Spring) is at once lovely, heartbreaking and hopeful.   The story follows Lanie, a mom of three boys under four, and her family as they move across country to follow her musician husband’s dream of graduate school.   Moving is stressful enough, but when, on her first day in town, she is asked by another mom at the playground, “When are you due?” Lanie is shocked into a realization that she is no longer the woman her husband married.   Not just in pounds, but in dreams and ambition; she startles to find that all of the things that once defined her have fallen by the wayside and been replaced with diapers, boogers and a two-year-old whose favorite playmate is his “noodle.”

The novel follows a charming sequence of alternating chapters: first the present day, then a slice of her college days of meeting and falling in love with her husband,  then back again to her maddening and often mundane world of child-wrangling.   Armed with the memories of who she once was, she resolves to change her life.    She sets on a path, first just to get back  in shape,  and ends up unleashing the artist inside her.   I don’t want to spoil any of the suspense that kept me up reading all night, but suffice to say  that the  “self improvement project” she embarks on has some unexpected effects on her relationship with her husband.

The thing I appreciated most about this book was the love story between Lanie and her husband.   There is a scene where Lanie shows up at the gym where her husband is working out on the treadmill, and she is so self conscious of him seeing her baggy and sweaty in the land of lycra-clad nymphs, that she purposely picks a spot where he won’t see her, and then spends the hour staring at him, admiring him, and praying that he won’t turn around and catch her.   It’s such a unique, yet achingly real moment for a wife.   On the one hand, you let this  guy you married see you in sweats and oily hair at the end of an exhausting day with the kids,  and on the other,  you remember that you were once pursued by him and had a romantic relationship with him, and you are terrified that he might actually look at you and be embarrassed by what he sees.  

In another chapter, the family is invited over to a friend’s house for dinner, and as Lanie listens to the other wife asking her husband questions about his music and career, she is stunned to find that she never once thought to ask him those questions herself; that in the space of a pre-dinner cocktail, she learns more about her husband’s aspiring career than she  has in the last five years.     She is embarrassed and curious at the same time, wondering what else about him she may have never thought to ask about.   I actually got a little knot in my stomach in that scene – have I asked my husband any questions today besides “When do you want dinner ready?” and “Can you change Cooper’s poop?”

I have only one tiny gripe with this otherwise fantastic book, and that is the occasional foul language.   Longtime readers of this blog know that it’s a pet-peeve of mine.   Though even I have to admit that Center’s use of “the f-word” made me laugh once or twice, most notably in the scene where Lanie asks her landlord that if he really feels the need to use the word, to at least spell it out, for goodness sakes, in front of the kids.

There is something truly special about Katherine Center’s writing.   Regardless of how many personal traits I may or may not  have in common with her leading ladies, in both of her novels to date, I have had the distinct feeling that she is writing me.   The feelings and emotions in her books are so tangible, so authentic.   The theme of “losing yourself” when kids come along is one that every woman – especially a stay at home mom – struggles with, and Everyone is Beautiful embraces it and then tackles it; you find yourself not only cheering Lanie on, but wondering where exactly it was that you left your own streak of Who I Am.   This book will inspire you to get up and get moving and remember all those little parts of  you that still exist beneath the Mommy banner.

In fact, after you finish reading it, you might feel just a little bit beautiful, too.