The silent woman
September 20th, 2021
Shashi Bhat of New Westminster and editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine has published her second novel, The Most Precious Substance on Earth (M&S $24.95), a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old Indo-Canadian girl who says as little as possible. Nina has troubles with her best friend, a crush on her English teacher, a mother who insists on setting her up with local Halifax Indian boys and her father says prayers outside her bedroom door. Twenty years later when she is a high school teacher, Nina is still learning how to exist as a woman in the world as she struggles with online dating, grapples with how best to guide her students, and takes self-improvement courses and advanced education classes. All the while, Nina keeps her thoughts and feelings to herself. Publicity for the book notes that the novel “examines the fraught relationships between those who take and those who have something taken” and that it is a “portrait of how silence can shape a life.” 9780771094965
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