The Most Precious Substance on Earth
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2.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Journey Prize winner Shashi Bhat’s "powerful, surprising and terrifying" (Rufi Thorpe) story about a high school student's traumatic experience and how it irrevocably alters her life, for fans of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Girlhood, and Pen15.
Bright, hilarious, and sensitive fourteen-year-old Nina spends her spare time reading Beowulf and flirting with an internet predator. She has a vicious crush on her English teacher, and her best friend Amy is slowly drifting away. Meanwhile, Nina’s mother tries to match her up with local Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, and Nina’s worried father has started reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. Beginning with a disturbing incident at her high school, The Most Precious Substance on Earth tells stories of Nina’s life from the ‘90s to present day, when she returns to the classroom as a high school teacher with a haunting secret and discovers that the past is never far behind her.
Darkly funny, deeply affecting, unsettling, and at times even shocking, Shashi Bhat’s irresistible novel-in-stories examines the relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a sharp-edged and devastating look at how women are conditioned to hide their trauma and suppress their fear, loneliness, and anger, and an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bhat (The Family Took Shape) balances humor and pathos in this savvy coming-of-age story set in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At 14, bright, funny Nina crushes on her English teacher and loses her virginity to him. While her parents pray to Hindu gods and goddesses, Nina hangs out with her best friend, Amy, cutting classes and sharing inside jokes. After Amy drops out and leaves home, Nina's life implodes: she attends college, but struggles academically and later drops out of a graduate creative writing program. After she finds work as a 10th grade English teacher, one of the boys in her class insists on carrying her bag and writes about her in a class assignment, which triggers the trauma caused by her high school English teacher, the complete details of which Bhat keeps murky until late in the narrative. The ending feels a bit open, but Bhat offers memorable prose (describing Amy, Nina narrates, "her hugs have a soothing weight, like an X-ray blanket") and does an exceptional job revealing the turmoil under Nina's placid facade as she navigates dating, socializing, and the downward trajectory of her career. It adds up to a bold statement about the impact of a young woman's trauma.
