THE TEAHOUSE FIRE by ELLIS AVERY

The writer, Ellis Avery first saw the tea ceremony performed in 1998 at a teahouse by the Shishigatani canal in Kyoto.
“I was seated upstairs in an exquisite room built, I later learned in the early 20th century, whose architects had incorporated an exotic western element – glass - onto the geometric harmony of shoji, tatami, and wood”
When Avery returned to New York she began studying the tea ceremony. One question that puzzled her was, why were all the tea masters men? She learned that for close to its 400-year history, “The Way of the Tea” was the province of warriors and wealthy men who would gather for the ritual in teahouses where women were not welcomed.
When researching that question she discovered a 19th century woman who did involve herself in the tea ceremony. She based the character Yukako Shin on this woman. Avery spent her time studying the tea ceremony and the Japanese language and lived in Kyoto while researching and writing the book.

"When I was nine, in the city now called Kyoto, I changed my fate. I walked into the shrine through the red arch and struck the bell. I bowed twice. I clapped twice. I whispered to the foreign goddess and bowed again. And then I heard the shouts and the fire. What I asked for? Any life but this one."

This is how the book The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery begins. It tells the story of nine-year-old Aurelia Bernard, born in Paris, orphaned in New York and brought to Kyoto by her missionary uncle. She takes shelter from a fire in the teahouse of the family Shin. The daughter of the tea master discovers her. A whole new world opens for her when the family takes her in, rename her Urako and she becomes Yukako’s assistant and surrogate little sister.

Avery has written a lushly rendered story of Japan in the midst of great changes and modernization. I definitely recommend you read it before visiting Kyoto.

The building where Avery witnessed a tea ceremony is still standing, although it is no longer a teahouse. It is a café on the Philosopher’s Walk. I intend to visit it.

Click on the website.

http://www.yojiya.co.jp/english/cafe/index.html


REVIEWS

Leigh Anne Vrabel, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Library Journal-- 


Avery's compelling debut novel presents women who dare to challenge expectations in the changing cultural landscape of 19th-century Japan. The Shin family has taught the tea ceremony for generations, but daughter Yukako is expected to marry the next master teacher instead of assuming the role herself. When Yukako discovers white American Aurelia hiding from her abusive missionary uncle on the Shin estate, she takes her in as a servant-companion and secretly teaches her the family arts. But can their friendship survive the changes that sweep Japan as the 20th century begins? Readers who enjoy historical fiction will be dazzled by Avery's attention to detail, savoring her descriptions of each kimono and tea implement. Those who like plot twists will relish the epic cast of characters who help and hinder Aurelia and Yukako as they mature.


Deborah Donovan, Booklist-- 

Avery, a long-time student of Japanese tea ceremony, has set her first novel in Japan in the late nineteenth century, years 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 vivid period details, as the steam engine arrives, women stop blackening their teeth, and the ban on Christianity is lifted. 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."

Emily Barton, author of BROOKLAND, The Los Angeles Times-- 

When [Avery's narrator] remarks, How beautiful, to see something done simply and well, she could easily be speaking about THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, a novel that, like the tea ceremony itself, provides true pleasure to the intellect and all the senses.
(December 31, 2006. Click here to read the full review

New York Press, Best of Manhattan
BEST WRITER YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF BUT SHOULD GO READ RIGHT NOW
We can't shut up about Ellis Avery's THE TEAHOUSE FIRE. The novel makes the story of 19th-century Kyoto as it is opening to the West-- told via the perspective of an American orphan, Aurelia, adopted by a Japanese family of tea masters-- seem like it's playing on IMAX. Aurelia inhabits a hyper-cinematic world of lacquered palanquins, shoji-screened teahouses and Geishas wearing layers of kimonos as the "butter-smelly barbarians" (that would be Americans) are on their way. Just go read it already. Go! Why are you still reading this?


Lucy Daniel, Financial Times--

The tea ceremony becomes a tiny stage on which grand passions are enacted... Avery captures all this with the emotional poise befitting her characters, and great sensual pleasure. Her novel is a rather beautiful thing: all the more so for emulating the values of another world.


Karen Schechner, January Magazine--
Artful... an intricately imagined world... Part of the enjoyment of Avery's expansive novel is that as Urako finds her place in Japan, and in The Way of Tea, she sweeps the reader along with her in almost visceral experience of late-1800s Kyoto.
(May, 2007)


Paul Kim, Audrey: The Asian American Women's Lifestyle Magazine--

A strong story of friendship that avoids Orientalist tendencies...a breathtaking portrait of two women...Avery fuses history, romance and cultural observation into a novel of impressive scope and stylistic execution. Fascinating in its portrayal of friendship during a time of great cultural transition, The Teahouse Fire is a story that will please readers and history buffs alike.
(June, 2007)

Susan Pavloska, Kyoto Journal--
"A fascinating...account of daily life in Kyoto during the crucial years of Japan's struggle to come to terms with the end of its centuries-long cultural and political isolation."
(Spring, 2007)

Tim Bryant, Buffalo Artvoice--
Beneath the beautiful surface of Avery's artfully controlled prose...the novel's essential question is that of desire: By what ceremonies, through what pains and past what obstacles must we endure in order to have not just any life but the one we most want to claim as our own?
(February 8, 2007. Click here to read the full review)


Kate Lavin, The Contra Costa Times--
By turns beautifully minimalist and rich in detail...
(February 4, 2007. Click here to read this interview in its entirety.)


Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Japundit--

Ellis Avery's research included a stay in Kyoto where she studied the tea ceremony, but that alone doesn't account for her perceptiveness about Japan; she's simply a keen cultural observer. 
(December 31, 2006. Click here to read the full review)

Bookdwarf-- 

[A] lovely debut novel... told with lush and precise details through the eyes of a complicated narrator.
(November 9th, 2006. Click here to read the full review)
Suzanne Kamata, Japan Visitor-- 

Avery weaves... historical elements into a riveting story of love and betrayal. As in tea ceremony itself, there are many moments of great beauty. This is an impressive debut. 
(October 5, 2006. Click here to read the full review)

Matt Haig, author of THE DEAD FATHERS CLUB-- 

THE TEAHOUSE FIRE is a novel as exquisitely intricate and carefully presented as the tea ceremonies it depicts. It is a masterful act, and a most captivating portrait of a changing society. A book to savor. 


Emma Donohue, author of SLAMMERKIN-- 

With meticulous detail and exquisite sensuality, Avery invites us into a lost world on the brink of transformation. THE TEAHOUSE FIRE is an absolute spellbinder. 


Liza Dalby, author of GEISHA-- 

In Ellis Avery's THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, aesthetic rules vie with politics, sex and human feeling. Avery has whipped up a heady brew. 


Maxine Hong Kingston, author of THE FIFTH BOOK OF PEACE-- 

Reading Ellis Avery's THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, for me, is like attending seasons of elegant tea parties-- each one resplendent with character and drama. Delicious