The Teahouse Fire [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Ellis Avery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2006

The story of two women whose lives intersect in late nineteenth century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is also a portrait of one of the most fascinating places and times in all of history-Japan as it opens its doors to the West. Told through the enchanting and unforgettable voice of Aurelia, an American orphan adopted by proprietors of a tea ceremony school, this is "a magisterial novel that is equal parts love story, imaginative history and bildungsroman, a story as alluring as it is powerful" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (December 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489300
• ASIN: B000RW9DQ8
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,402,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ellis Avery studied Japanese tea ceremony for five years in New York and Kyoto, and now teaches creative writing at Columbia University. She is the author of a novel, THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, and an award-winning nonfiction book, THE SMOKE WEEK: SEPTEMBER 11-21, 2001. Her work as appeared in The Village Voice, Publishers Weekly, and Kyoto Journal, and produced onstage at New York's Expanded Arts Theater.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful 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, March 4, 2007

By 

Elaine C. Freedgood (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The 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.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Really wanted to love this book...., January 8, 2008

By 

MLRapp (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The 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, May 1, 2007

By 

M. Demian (Canterbury, Kent, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The 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.