The Tea Ceremony: The Uncollected Writings of Gina Berriault [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Gina Berriault (Author), Leonard Gardner (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 11, 2003

Compiled by Gina Berriault’s daughter and by her longtime companion, Leonard Gardner, this posthumous collection of previously uncollected fiction and nonfiction celebrates the career of an American treasure. It opens with five stories, including “The Figure Skater,” the last story published before she died in 1999. Also here is the first section of the novel she left unfinished and her brilliant acceptance speech for the Commonwealth Club of California’s Gold Medal for Literature. As reclusive as she was meticulous, Gina Berriault did not suffer fools and sat for only a handful of interviews. She was acutely aware of nuance and tended to write and rewrite not only answers but also the questions, making the interview printed here as finished and beautiful as any of her writing. Here, too, are her essays for Rolling Stone, Hungry Mind, and Esquire on subjects as diverse as the first topless dancers in San Francisco’s North Beach to the last firing squad execution. As a whole this collection becomes her credo on American culture, politics, and the written word.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Berriault's fiction, particularly her pristine and surprising short stories, have been highly praised by such fellow practitioners as Andre Dubus, but it wasn't until her powerful collection Women in Their Beds garnered the 1995 PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Awards that word of her brilliance reached a wider readership. A writer with the compassion and precision of Grace Paley and Chekhov, and a penchant for the fantastic born, in part, from her love of Gogol, Berriault envisioned the lives of all sorts of people in all sorts of unsettling predicaments. This compelling posthumous collection (Berriault died in 1999) presents five remarkable short stories, each a study in the dignity of outsiders, followed by a set of wryly understated and keenly perceptive essays from the 1960s in which Berriault profiles a student activist; topless dancers; a firing squad; and Carolyn Cassady, whose husband, Neal, had just died. Here, too, are reflections on writing and humanism, and a poignant interview, all testimony to the purity of Berriault's mission and the magnitude of her gifts. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard (September 11, 2003)
• ISBN-10: 1593760043
• ASIN: B001G7REAU
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,124,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Last collection of a truly great writer, September 25, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Tea Ceremony: The Uncollected Writings of Gina Berriault (Hardcover)

Not the place to start if your new to Berriault (if you're new, try "Women In Their Beds" or "Afterwards").

Berriault is one of the finest American writers of the last 50 years, despite the fact that her work is not well known. Perhaps no one writes better about the inner lives of women. And her sentences are always superb--lyrically honed, filled with insight.

This collection is what you get after you've read everything else and there are some nice gems here too (some nice journalism, a very thoughtful interview, some uncollected stories). Go get your hands one aforementioned books!