Nothing Is Terrible: A Novel [Paperback]

Matthew Sharpe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2000

Matthew Sharpe's debut collection, Stories from the Tube, was praised in the Los Angeles Times Book Review for its "wildly effective-and often touching-collisions of the banal and the surreal." Wiredcalled it "unsettling, lovely, creepy"; Forbes FYI heralded it as a "remarkable fiction debut." In Nothing Is Terrible, his first novel, Sharpe astonishes once again with the hallucinatory and hilarious story of a girl's unusual coming-of-age and her search for love in unlikely places.

Her name is Mary White, though she prefers to be called Paul, the name of her ill-fated twin brother. Bright, pragmatic, irreverent, and orphaned, she is being raised by her clueless aunt and uncle and fears she may be about to drown in dull suburban torpor-until she falls in love with her new sixth-grade teacher, Miss Skip Hartman. Devoted teacher and pupil run off to live in New York City, where Mary receives a very unconventional education (art dealers, drug dealers, boyfriends, epic piercings) and discovers redemptive power in even the most unorthodox kind of love, all of which she relates in the most Brontëan gentle-reader tone.

In Nothing Is Terrible, Matthew Sharpe takes the bildungsroman and turns it upside down and inside out. Like a breakneck sprint through a Manhattan house of mirrors, it offers readers a giddily literate tour of the resourceful mind of a singular young woman.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Grotesquely comic and resolutely strange, short story writer and journalist Sharpe's first novel involves an androgynous, precocious girl named Mary White, who accidentally causes her twin brother Paul's death and is redeemed in love by her blonde and beautiful sixth-grade teacher. Upon the death of their parents in a car accident, 10-year-old Mary and her brother are left in the care of their mean-tempered uncle and simple, silent aunt. Sickly Paul is the philosopher and Mary the energetic implementer of his ideas. After Mary stirs up a bees' nest and Paul dies from their stings, she is left to fend for herself in the suburban school system. She develops what she calls her "ongoing involvement with myself," becoming a small-scale tyrant and musing often on her fate. As she herself remarks to the "dear reader" in Charlotte Brontean fashion: "This Mary character is not very nice." Smitten with the difficult 11-year-old, Teacher of the Year Miss "Skip" Hartman seduces her and literally buys her from her aunt and uncle. Whisked away to Skip's Upper East Side apartment, Mary is schooled in Shakespeare, algebra and the arts of love. But becoming restless, she takes up with a coterie of aimless drug pushers and her second lover, an environmentally sensitive Central Park squatter and ex-classmate named Mittler. Through characters such as Paul and early moments of rare sincerity, Sharpe proves that he can write affectingly. However, he condescends to the reader like an uneasy comedian afraid to bore the audience, relying heavily on his deadpan delivery of grotesque detail. His Mary--unsympathetic, smug and, worst of all for a fictional character, not memorable--is no Jane Eyre. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Sharpe follows his witty collection Stories from the Tube with a zany novel of manners that stretches the imagination. A hermaphrodite named Mary White--a self-proclaimed "obnoxious, lonely, self-loathing American orphan"--relates the story of her life between the ages of 11 and 18 in the style of a Jane Austen memoir. In a wildly imaginative twist of circumstances beginning with her parents' death in a car accident, Mary and her twin brother, Paul, are raised by her uncommunicative aunt and cavalier uncle. After her brother's bizarre death, Mary is seduced by her sixth grade teacher, Skip Harman, who is subsequently fired by the school and speeds off with Mary to New York. Skip is an independently wealthy woman who surrounds herself with a cavalcade of eccentric characters who sweep into Mary's life. This debut novel of exaggerations encourages social criticism and is a clever and unpredictable tale of absurdities. Recommended for most collections.
-David A. Beron?, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Villard (February 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081299227X
• ISBN-13: 978-0812992274
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #500,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provacative in its emotional familiarity, September 29, 2000

By 

nick balaban (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing Is Terrible: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was fast-paced and relatively easy to read, yet decidedly unnerving and creepy. Creepy, not because of the characters, who are often downright wholesome and sympathetic. But because, as it turns out, these modern-day Jane Eyre-like folks end up doing things that make most of us uncomfortable thinking about, no less doing ourselves. One can't help identifying with the innocence pervading each decadent and/or criminal relationship. The most frightening thought that crossed my mind was that somehow this book reflects the innocent decadence of our time. To sum up: entertaining throughout and mind-expanding, thought-provoking stuff. A great book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mathew Sharpe Takes the Novel Back for the Gringos, March 8, 2000

By 

A reader in Bloomington, Indiana (Bloomington, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing Is Terrible: A Novel (Hardcover)

For the last few decades, U.S. novelists have unsuccessfully played catch-up with the Latin American Boom writers of the 1960s--Fuentes, García Márquez, Borges, Cortázar--often applying their magic realism in embarrassingly mannered, academic ways. Sharpe, though has found the key. The fantastic visions of Mary (Paul) make perfect sense after a few tabs of acid. Wise, witty, daring, Matthew Sharpe takes the novel back for the gringos.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, August 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Nothing Is Terrible: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm actually a poet and have never written a fiction review, but this book really struck me. It is gorgeous, clever, original, and a surprisingly quick read (considering how unusual the characters are). Sharpe should be given credit for his writing style, wit, and depth, but most of all, he should receive high praise for working with material that is sui-generis, completely ambitious, and utterly risky. In this novel, he is like a gymnast doing a very difficult routine on the balance beam -- and he pulls it off. Brilliant technique, arresting grace, flawless dismount.