Nothing is terrible

the long version

"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 Brontean gentle-reader tone.". "In Nothing Is Terrible, Matthew Sharpe takes the bil-dungsroman 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."--BOOK JACKET.