The Center of the Universe
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The Center of the Universe
Grandma puts a stack of side plates in the cupboard and closes the door. “I sense you and your mother are having trouble right now.”
“No more than usual,” I say, focusing on wiping a spot on a plate.
“She told me you walked out on a conversation.”
She described it as a conversation? I put the plate away indelicately. “You weren’t there.”
She comes over and takes the cloth from me. “Grace, this is important.”
I can’t meet her eyes and I hate that. I’m not willing to cry right now.
“Honey, you need to listen to each other.”
“Stop.”
She holds my shoulders firmly. “Grace, it’s all going to come out and it’s going to be okay.”
“At the stupid taping, yeah, in front of everyone.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “How can she feel those things for him? Did she tell you? I don’t know what story to believe anymore. I don’t know who she is.”
Grandma pulls me closer. “Honey, ask her. Listen to her. Now is the time.”
I push away. “You keep saying that. What’s happened to you? You were never this … enlightened.”
She laughs. “Grace, honey. Here’s the thing I learned years ago, when your mother was young.” She holds her hands out, as if demonstrating something. “Mothers and daughters exist in a relationship that’s always moving. There’s pushing and pulling, a back and forth, a circling around of arguments that never ends, and you know why? Because we’re made of the same stuff. We know each other, we see ourselves in the other. It’s how we’re built.”
I press my fingers against my eyes and count breaths.
She’s still there in front of me when I’m done. “I’m old and annoying and leaving, but I can still be right about some things.”
“Okay, Grandma,” I say, letting her hug me.
“Okay what?”
“I’ll think about your unsolicited advice.”
She pats my cheek. “You’re several steps ahead of her, you know. You’ll see.”
Grace’s mother is a media celebrity who simply vanishes one day in the middle of her son’s soccer game. Has she been abducted because of her star status? Has she possibly been murdered? Or has she simply become tired of her life and decided to run away and start over somewhere new? Grace and her family are thrust into a missing person’s police investigation. Her friends, Iris and Mylo, do their best to give her support, but there are more questions than answers. Grace’s reality has become as strange and difficult to comprehend as the stars and planets which so intrigue her.
The main character of Voros’ novel is a budding astrophysicist who has little in common with her popular mother. Grace is a nerd who is introverted and intelligent and who cannot understand or accept her mother’s need for publicity and attention. There are times when Grace, a 17-year-old high school student, is a stereotypical teenager – quick to anger and insults, edgy and abrasive. Best friend Iris and romantic interest Mylo both act as buffers for Grace and help keep her centered and sane. While there is no grand conversion of Grace’s essential character, she does grow and mature throughout The Center of the Universe.
Much of the book centres on the theme of the relationships between mothers and daughters and the difficulties which often arise because of their inherent similarities. GG, Grace’s mother, appears at first to be a selfish and egotistical woman whose only true interest is her career. Eventually, readers see layers in her personality and learn about her as a university student when she had more options and opportunities. Readers come to understand GG’s relationship with her own mother. This seems to become a cycle which impacts Grace and her grandmother as well as Grace and her mother. While Grace and her mother may never become close and may never entirely understand one another, they both learn a great deal about communication and compassion through the ordeal of GG’s disappearance and ultimate return to the family. The healing of the rifts between them is not complete but is underway by the end of the book and readers will feel optimistic about the future of their relationship. Grace has learned much more about herself – the self both with and without her mother’s presence.
Voros has given her young adult readers a novel which will satisfy on many levels. Those who like mystery and police dramas will enjoy the investigation into GG’s disappearance and the ultimate putting together of various clues in order to find her. Readers who like family dramas will watch the various relationships in the book change and evolve. And for those who enjoy romance, there is the character of Mylo. Certainly this relationship isn’t the central focus of the book, but he provides a calming and centering influence for Grace along with being a love interest.
Science, in particular astronomy, plays a large role in the novel and helps readers understand Grace’s way of seeing the world around her. One of Grace’s idols is astrophysicist Dr. Elizabeth Tasker, a real-life scientist who is fictionalized within the novel. Voros includes an interesting interview with Tasker at the end of the book. She is an excellent role model for Grace who, in turn, provides a role model for young adult female readers who are interested in the sciences.
Unlike many mysteries which build to a conclusion where readers find out ‘whodunnit’, this novel continues on for many chapters once GG’s disappearance is solved, and it is in this final section of the book where much of the family drama takes place and where Grace and her mother begin the long road toward mutual respect and understanding. The case per se may be solved, but nothing returns to normal, to the way it was before GG’s disappearance, and this is what makes this book both different and special. The Center of the Universe may seem very long at 500 pages, but the chapters are often quite short, and the change of focus from mystery to drama keeps readers interested.
This novel takes on the entire universe on some pages, and, on others, it bores down into individual emotions and reactions. Thank you, Ria Voros, for taking your readers on such a wondrous journey.
Ann Ketcheson, a retired teacher-librarian and high school teacher of English and French, lives in Ottawa, Ontario.