num_pages: 272
description: Journey Prize winner Shashi Bhats 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 Ninas mother tries to match her up with local Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references and Ninas 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 Ninas 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 Bhats 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.
language: English
title: The Most Precious Substance on Earth
publisher: Grand Central Publishing