This is a complicated book, and the writing style doesn’t help matters. I found it very confusing in the first portion, trying to figure out who were all these characters. People are introduced as if you know who they are right away.

The world is of Polly. She had a concussion months ago, but is still recovering from her injury, sometimes she drifts off, sees things, Polly is consumed by memories of her past. Many of these memories her mother Jane claim are not something Polly would remember but made up from photographs and stories the family told.

This brings us from present 2002 to the past in 1968 when Polly was 8 and it was a significant time in her life. Both settings are in the same family home in Montana. As the past comes forward, and there is another death of significance, a family friend, a young girl who went missing after a day on the river with a group of friends.

The book is very rich with details and imagery. The world is fully developed, and one can see all that is contained, once you get further into the story and settled into the setting. There are loose threads throughout the book that slowly tie together in the end. This is one book where the ending makes up for the difficulties in the beginning.

A wonderful saga of three generations. I struggled at first to keep all the storylines straight but the more I read, the more invested I became. The story of Polly and her brain injury recovery was most poignant. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

It’s only January 7, 2021 as I write this, and this reading year, already has the appearance of the being the year of complex family dramas. This story is told over two timelines, 1968 and 2002. Polly who has moved to Montana from Long Island with her family, is recovering from an accident, when her baby-sitter goes missing and is feared dead. Afraid that she has drowned, this takes her back to an eerily similar incident that took place when she was just a kid.

Alternating between the two timelines, Harrison weaves together a story that seems more mystery at times than literary. For the first two-thirds of the book, I was totally engaged and bought in. However, this book lost its luster towards the end. I found I was getting bored, but I was far enough along to stick with it. It is a solid story, but I think I need more dedicated time to read a larger chunk at a time. It was difficult to stay with it, thus me losing some interest. I really do think people will love this book, but just save this one for when you have some dedicated reading time.

Thank you NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So many characters! I found the book to be very slow=moving and confusing with the constant jumping around in time=frames and characters. It wasn't an easy book to read - but then again, it wasn't an easy topic. I just couldn't get into the whole story.

While the book was not long, it took me a while to get through it. Polly struggles with her memory and executive functions of the brain after a car hit her bike. There were so many characters and so many memories shared, I had trouble keeping everything straight. That being said, I found the story hits the mark when talking about brain injuries. Harrison has written a story that portrays the issues well. Perhaps it was painful reading for me since I am carrying for my husband who has Frontal Temporal Dementia and Polly’s issues are so real to me.

Reviewed this for major newspaper. Hypnotic, gorgeous writing, and a story I won't forget. I truly loved this one.

I looked so forward to reading this book, that the higher it rose in my TBR pile, the more I smiled. Despite my initial enthusiasm and continuing hope, this book and I never connected. I found the writing flat and almost distant though I wish I could describe that better! Observational reporting perhaps, with no feeling towards what was happening.

For a book that wonders how much of what we think we remember is what really happened at the time, considering our changed perspectives of time and age, I'll find this read easy to forget. I shouldn't be so disappointed, it would be unlikely to connect with every read, though I had hoped to end 2020 and start 2021 on a brighter note.

My apologies and appreciation to the author, NetGalley, and Counterpoint Press for allowing me to read an advanced copy of the book which is to be published 1/12/2021. All opinions expressed here are my own.

It took me a long time to get into this story. It's the story of Polly who's recently had a head injury and her perception of time and memory has become unreliable. The story moves back and forth between present day where a girl goes missing, and the past, when Polly is a girl.

The Center of Everything is a generational family story. It is about anger and grief, and loss. It's about how our past can haunt us and how things long buried are always there, coming back in the most unexpected moments.

This is a beautiful, slow moving story that builds up. If you love character driven stories, you will enjoy this one.

with gratitude to netgalley and Counterpoint Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The multi generational and natural world elements drew me in, but it was hard to stay engaged in this book - not to mention the voice made it really hard to engage. This book will work for some but not everyone.

This book is basically told in two parts - the summer of 2002 and the summer of 1968, which share peculiar similarities.
After a bicycle accident, Polly has been experiencing some cognitive difficulties, especially having to do with attention span. In spite of this, or maybe because of, she’s been finding that her ability to recall childhood memories has been enhanced. When their babysitter goes missing on a rafting trip and is presumed to have drowned, Polly is drawn back to the summer she was eight, and found a body washed ashore, and the lasting mark it would have on her life.
While I really enjoyed both the past and present stories being told, I found the book as a whole had too much extra stuff - extraneous characters, descriptions, scenes - that didn’t really add anything. They mostly just mucked things up. I think the narrative would have been better served with a shorter book and some tighter editing. Because of this, I knocked it down a star.
Thanks to #netgalley and #counterpointpublishing for this ARC of #thecenterofeverything in exchange for an honest review.

wonderfully written and executed generational saga the likes of which i've not seen in years. Loved it! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher!

I think that this book is probably wonderful but I'm sorry to say that I just could not get into it. The narrative style was all over the place and I found myself wondering, more often than not, what was happening, what point in time I was reading about, and who was being spoken about. I am so grateful for the opportunity to read this book early and I would not not recommend it. It just did not suit my own preferences as a reader.

This book wasn't for me. I know how much effort goes into writing a book and I wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't. I read about half and gave up. The premise of a woman who hits her head in a bike fall and then has memory problems sounded intriguing. What it was is confusing. The storyline jumps around, I couldn't track the characters, it jumps from past to current day. Maybe the jumping around is meant to mimic her brain, her thoughts after the brain injury - if so, I'd hate to be in her brain because it was really hard to follow. I feel like I wasn't given enough info about the main character to care that she is confused and can't remember things......

Thanks to #NetGalley and #CounterpointPress for the ARC kindle copy.

What a wonderful book. This is an immersive look into the complexities of a multigenerational family. The characters are so well developed that I lost myself in their lives. This is a story I thought about when I had to put the book down.

In the first eleven pages, the reader discovers that Polly is hit by a car while riding her bike and suffers a brain injury. She sometimes freeze and temporarily disappears into a memory. Polly is learning to manage the spells with the help of friends and family. The second story arc is about Ariel, a well liked young woman, who disappears while kyaking with a group down the Yellowstone River. The third important element concerns the book title.... "Good mothers, good mothers were rarities, the center of everything,'' My recommendation is five stars for this great book.

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy from Counterpoint Press through NetGalley The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
#TheCenterOfEverything #NetGalley

Polly Schuster lives in Montana near the Yellowstone River. It is a few days before an annual 4th of July fest that she is hosting for family and friends. With her husband Ned, they run a bar/restaurant that is usually the epicenter of such activities. Polly also has two young children to care for as she goes about her activities.

But this year is exceptionally challenging for her on two different levels. There is a rafting tragedy on the Yellowstone that people question about how it occurred. And there are also Polly’s personal issues. She is recovering from a bike accident that left her with a brain injury. It is an injury that the doctors and insurance company do not readily acknowledge. But it becomes apparent to the reader – something is just not right. So, Polly is an unwillingly unreliable narrator.

Harrison takes us back and forth in time as Polly’s memory slips into the past, then forward into her current situation and unchartered future. Her memories are quite sensory. She is a keen observer of the sensory world in both the past and present – smells, sounds, and sights. She believes she recalls conversations and was present at events that she may have witnessed or just heard about. Sometimes the past seems more of a puzzle to her than her own puzzlement regarding the recent river tragedy. Sometimes, she even slips away from the present and enters a type of fugue state.

The author takes the reader back to Long Island Sound, New York City, World Wars, Vietnam and 9/ll. Many characters, both friends and family are introduced. This reader got somewhat confused as no doubt Polly may have, in trying to reconcile past and present. But the writing is so evocative of time and place, it was easy to persevere.

This is a journey that should be taken, even though the details are a bit overwhelming. Trust the author and Polly to take you to the place where an ending, beyond satisfactory is waiting. Highly recommended.

I was a big fan of Jamie Harrison's Blue Deer/Jules Clement mystery novels written from 1995-2000. Then she disappeared and I thought she ha but until 2017 brought forth the publication of Widow Nash (which I bought and did not read). Now 3 years later she has published The Center of Everything. This is a story that revolves around the life of 42 year old woman, Polly and her large extended family. It takes place in 2 time periods, 2002, when Polly is 42 and has suffered a brain injury after being hit by a car. The other time period is 1968, when Polly is 8, and living on Long Island with her mother and father, her great-grandparents, and a young boy named Edmund, and his mother Rita. The book, which is a grand family historical saga, switches between these two time periods.
There is some wonderful writing in here, and there are a couple of clunky convergences.
I read this book until I got lost at about 30% so I jumped to the last 15% to see if it was worth the read. The ending gave enough satisfaction that I went back and re-read the whole book. There are times when Harrison writes beautifully and the book really flows; there are times when it is just a ramble. The book needs to be tightened up with a stronger central thread (whatever that is) running through it. Based on my experience I would give this a 3 star, but I think there are many readers who might enjoy Harrison's writing ability and her eruditeness, And there are things in this book that are amazing (her description of the beginning of the modern food scene in New York City is great.)

I found this book confusing and difficult to follow. I struggled to get through it. I as well as Polly, couldn't quite get the storyline. I thought the book was disjointed and did not flow. I was lost from the beginning and then characters kept getting added? As a reader, there is nothing worse than being thrown into the middle of the story, and then attempting to unravel and figure out who these people are and oh wait-this is suppose to be a 'compelling family drama?! " I did not find this to be a compulsory read.
Regards to NetGalley & Counterpoint Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

janne boswell
https://seniorbooklounge.blogspot.com/

5 stars for the most novel and engaging novel I've read in a long time. Jamie Harrison has brought together a family of extended characters full of quirks and tenderness The central character, Polly, had a rich imaginative mind before her brain injury. Flashbacks to her childhood years suggest that her pre-TBI brain was itself a landscape like no other, leading some family to discount certain memories. I loved this richly atmospheric story as the action shifts between earlier events and the community's present grieving over a lost girl, presumed dead from a kayaking accident, but what about the supposed boyfriend in the boat with her at the time. Who is he really? Critical readers will appreciate the writing and character development in this exquisitely plotted story. Disclosure: I received a free ebook from NetGalley in expectation of an unbiased review.

The Center of Everything is the kind of multi-generational saga that I no longer read, but I am glad I gave this one a chance. Polly's family history is filled with the usual mix of secrets and love and love and secrets and imbroglios and connections, and references so fleeting you might just miss them in passing but which come back to haunt later on.

The framework of the piece begins with preparations for a July 4 week celebration coinciding with the disappearance of one of the town's better loved young women. Polly, the central figure if not the center of everything, had suffered a brain injuring bicycle accident several months earlier, causing "non painful migraines" and triggered flashbacks to the "tilting point" of the summer of 1968 when she was 8. From here on, the story occasionally reverts to that time.

Jamie Harrison has deliberately set this story in 2002 in order that the chronology will work for various family members as the plot becomes revealed, against such world events as WWI, Viet Nam, 9/11, and I am supposing, pre-Smartphone invasion. Her style of composition is unique - much of the action is rendered in flat, almost journalistic prose, but when we enter the "small kingdom" of Polly's mind, it becomes more expansive. It is a masterful work in which the prevalence of family traditions, the symbolic presence and importance of water, and the impermanence and unreliability of memory all play large parts. As I had become emotionally invested in so many of these people, I was pleased that their futures were revealed in I've come to call The Six Feet Under device. Well done.

I have never read anything by this author. The description of the novel and the setting intrigued me.
Overall, I liked this book, though the beginning was a bit slow for me, but it turned out well.