The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
The Teahouse Fire
The fates of two women—one American, one Japanese—become
entwined in this sweeping novel of 19th century Japan on the cusp of
radical change and westernization. The Japanese tea ceremony,
steeped in ritual, is at the heart of this story of an American girl, adopted by
Kyotos most important tea master and raised as attendant and surrogate
younger sister to his privileged daughter Yukako. Pasts shrouded in
secrets and mysterious traditions rocked by modernization make THE
TEAHOUSE FIRE a compelling and provocative story, lush in details and
epic in scope.
Personal Review: The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
which i don't usually do anymore. There is real depth of characterization
here, people are not as nice as we want them to be, but they are
interesting and complex. It seemed to me that the narrative voice is very
complex also... as the European girl grows and assimilates into Japanese
culture, her and our perspectives shift.... besides the rich detail on the tea

ceremony, the beginning of the Meiji era and its accompanying politics,
there are repeated riffs on caste and identity, cultural imperatives and
hypocracies, childhood and growing up, gender roles, economics, etc. A
very thoughtful and well researched book.
The only thing that disappointed me was the painfully pc message and
"happy lesbian ending" at the end of the book, which seemed simplistic
compared to the way the same topic and others were handled in the rest of
the book. I don't know whether this represented a personal bias or wish
fulfillment of the author's, or poor editing to keep the length down at the
end, or?
in any case, it is a strong, well written and well researched book, with
much to say about courage, risk, hard work, discrimination, and many
other important issues.
Some of the other reviews criticized the pace of the book... i felt the detail
and flow contributed to the experience of feeling inside Japanese culture.
The introduction of the classic stories of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book and
the Tale of Genji was at exactly the right moment to intensify and round out
the story.
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