- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead (HC); 1 edition (Jan 2 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594489300
- ISBN-13: 978-1594489303
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.7 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,001,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1865, nine-year-old Aurelia Caillard is taken from New York to Japan by her missionary uncle Charles while her ailing mother dies at home. Charles soon vanishes in a fire (not the one of the title), leaving Aurelia orphaned and alone in Kyoto. She is taken in by Yukako, the teenage daughter of the Shin family, master teachers of temae, or tea ceremony. Aurelia, narrating as an elderly woman, tells of living as Yukako's servant and younger sister, and how what begins as grateful puppy love for Yukako matures over years into a deeply painful unrequited obsession. Against a backdrop of a convulsively Westernizing Japan, Avery brings the conflicts of modernization into the teahouse, and into Aurelia and Yukako's beds, where jealousy over lovers threatens to tear them apart. In one memorable instance, Yukako, struggling to bring money in for the family, crosses class lines and gives temae lessons to a geisha in exchange for lessons on the shamisen, a seductive (and potentially profitable) string instrument. Eventually stuck in a painful marriage, Yukako labors to adapt the ancient tea ceremony to the changing needs of the modern world, resulting in a breathtaking confrontation. Avery, making her debut, has crafted a magisterial novel that is equal parts love story, imaginative history and bildungsroman, a story as alluring as it is powerful. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Avery, a longtime student of the Japanese tea ceremony, has set her first novel in late-nineteenth-century Japan, when that tradition-steeped nation gradually exposed itself to the modern West. She weaves a memorable saga of two women: Yukako, the daughter of a respected "tea advisor" to feudal lords, and Aurelia, a French orphan who traveled to Kyoto at age nine with her uncle, and was adopted by the tea master's family after he died. Avery adroitly conveys the intricacies of the tea ceremony, "the language of diplomacy," and the subtle ways in which it was transformed as Japan moved from a Shogun society to one ruled by the emperor. At the same time, she illuminates other social changes, such as the arrival of the steam engine, women no longer blackening their teeth, and the lifting of the ban on Christianity. Aurelia remains Yukako's stalwart friend through doomed romances and a disappointing marriage, telling her, when Yukako resumes her father's tea ceremonies after his death, "You took an art that could have died, and you made it live." Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
The tea ceremony,
By
This review is from: The Teahouse Fire (Paperback)
THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, Ellis Avery, Riverhead, 2006, pp.391If anyone is truly interested in the history of the teahouse ceremony ' how it was performed and the training process, Avery has written and excellent treatise along with embedding the lives of the Shin family. At first it appears strange that Aurelia is relating the story through her eyes, living with her Jesuit uncle and moving to Kyoto, Japan but this is necessary to spice up what would be rather monotonous. There is also some reference to sexual moves by her uncle whom she does not like but is now her only living relative. However once in Japan she is truly orphaned but discovered by Yukako of the Shin family who take her in. Aurelia is assigned the task of Yukako's maid . As the 25 years progress, she learns the language and customs of 1860-1912 Japan. As Yukako matures, her 'father' begins to teach her temae: 'Yukako didn't use the words 'make tea' when she talked about the whole choreographed ritual....' p. 48 This would normally have been taught to the son, but he has no other heir. Yukako perfects the way of the tea ceremonies while Aurelia, hiding behind a screen also perfects the art. A great deal of writing is devoted to tea preparation which is so very precise. Even the tools are very specialized. Under the present Master, Yukako and her sons all learned the highly technical procedures. When he dies, the title is normally passed on to a male heir after a two year study. Yukako has a good business sense and once the Master (her father) dies, she incorporates these ideas as the new Master. Her father had always been opposed to exposing this ancient tradition to outsiders but now she will gladly show foreigners who have a high interest in this unusual ritual ' just to make tea! Plus it affords her a living. Under the modernization program dictated by the Meiji emperors, temae was abandoned and had to be taught secretly: 'Worse still, the Emperor announced a program of Bunmei Kaika, Civilization and Enlightenment, dismissing tea...better abandoned than subsidized.' (p. 91) However, it is eventually reinstated as valuable, if for no other reason than a tourist delight. Now Yukako prospers churning out students for the emperor and nearby girl's school. Aurelia's plight and misfortunes are the threads knitting various parts of the story together. The novel would be quite boring without the inclusion of her life and that of others. Avery, who is quite familiar with the temae, describes the ceremony many times. Typically, as in most Japanese novels, history, language and culture is interspersed giving us some insight into late 19th century Japan. Though I was interested in the cultural stories, in general I was bored. The reason for the title becomes obvious as you read ' I don't want to reveal one of the few exciting events!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews) 25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
You will love spending time in the world of The Tea House Fire,
By Elaine C. Freedgood - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Teahouse Fire (Hardcover)
Many historical novels feel all too "set" in a distant time and place, and reading them is like having to walk gingerly through poorly constructed scenery. The Tea House Fire grows out of its setting with the grace and sureness of an organic process that we watch unfold with wonder. The extraordinary details on every page mean that the research for this novel must have been massive, yet it reads as though the author simply grew up in ninteenth-century Japan and assimilated the knowledge of the world she describes as she has her American narrator asssimilate it: as the adoptive daughter/sister in a family that has been teaching the art of tea for centuries. The Tea House Fire creates a world you will want to spend time in. The prose is delicate and original; the characters are unfamiliar and getting to know them slowly is an unusual pleasure, as is making acquaintace with the world that is drawn for us by Ellis Avery in such fine strokes.
34 of 39 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Really wanted to love this book....,
By MLRapp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Teahouse Fire (Hardcover)
...but it just wasn't my "cup of tea."Perhaps I was expecting something more akin to "Memoirs of a Geisha" or "Distant Land of My Father," etc., but I just could not get into this novel. I enjoyed the first hundred or so pages and found myself somewhat interested in the characters, learning about the art (for lack of a better word) of the tea ceremony and the political situation in Japan in the mid-eighteen hundreds. However, that is pretty much where it ended for me. It became too drawn out, slow and rather boring. I felt at times that certain details I needed to know were missing and thus found myself somewhat confused with the way the story was being told and its flow. Perhaps it would have been better if written as a young girl, as opposed to being written as an older woman looking back on her young years? Essentially, it became a chore to pick it up and read, which for someone like me who devours at least a book or two a week, is usually not a problem. Therefore, I gave up and never got past page 162. While its rare for me to put down a book, I just couldn't read it anymore and realize that I don't even care to even know how it ends. I'm not sure if this review will be helpful to others. As I said, I really came into it wanting and expecting to love it and it just missed the mark with me, however there are many other reviewers on this page who loved it. While I don't personally recommend this book, I think it would be of value to those with a particular interest in Japan, this particular time period, or the tea ceremony. 16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A feast of beauty,
By M. Demian - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Teahouse Fire (Hardcover)
Of all the remarkable things about THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, I'll highlight this one: there are precious few novels that educate the reader without talking down to her, that feed the heart without soppy romanticism, that accomplish poetry without pretention, and that evoke effortlessly the true strangeness of being cast adrift in a world of others' making. This is one such novel. Avery unfolds the life of Aurelia/Urako with such delicacy and precision that her intoxicated reader is moved to terror by the appearance of the wrong tea bowl, to panic by the counting-out of a bow, to unalloyed joy at the eventual gift of love so hard-won. Avery's world is a world of people signalling to each other, as best they can, through gesture and object and the language of ritual, the awful fact that desire rests on the impossibility of making itself known. "One moment, one meeting" is the mantra of tea ceremony, and this book is a sequence of such moments: in which all mistakes are swept away by the understanding that there is no such thing as a mistake.Avery's lucid and exacting prose will be appreciated by fans of Louise Erdrich or Annie Proulx; her eye for historical detail is comparable to Emma Donoghue's or Sarah Waters'. The grace with which she brings these talents together is uniquely her own. |
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