GRACE BOOK CLUB
Every Monday, Grace recommends a book by a woman writing literary prose.
THE TEAHOUSE FIRE by Ellis Avery
Nineteenth-century Kyoto, the floating world of geishas and temae (tea ceremony) is the subject of Ellis Avery’s grand new page-turner of a novel, The Teahouse Fire, out in hardcover from Riverhead Books. In 1865, nine-year-old Aurelia Caillard, a French-born New Yorker, is taken to Japan by her missionary uncle. When her uncle dies in a fire, Aurelia becomes an adopted servant of the Shin family, master teachers of temae. As Japan moves from a closed Shogun society to the Western-leaning reign of the emporer Meiji, Aurelia's (now called Urako) life in the teahouse switchbacks through the years, shadowing the rise of modern Japan. Ellis Avery's novel has layers of betrayal and intrigue and there is something so deliciously pulpy in the tale of an undiscovered Westerner growing up cosseted in traditional Japanese society. At the same time the novel manages its drama around a very still center. Urako’s gaze takes in arresting and provocative period details. The tea ceremony scenes are precise and vivid as they illustrate the pull of old ways. Urako’s oblique looks at Yukako, the strong-willed daughter of the master teacher, transform into an excessive, erotic, unrequited love. Shoguns, merchants, and a bartering geisha move in and out of teahouse life. Here is a compulsively readable, literary epic.