Avery has whipped up a heady brew of sex and human feeling Liza Dalby, author of The Tale of Murasaki, Geisha and Kimono In Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire, aesthetic rules vie with politics, sex and human feeling. This brims with intricate details about Japanese culture: the ways of the samurai, the different castes, the role of women USA Today

A book to savour Matt Haig, author of Dead Fathers ClubĪ rich story, to be savoured for its detail rather than its plot ObserverĪvery's writing is saturated with color and detail she manages to make 19th-century Japan both accessible and exotic Boston Globeįans of historical fiction, as well as those with an appetite for all things Japanese, should consider Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire. It is a masterful act, and a most captivating portrait of a changing society. The Teahouse Fire is a novel as exquisitely intricate and carefully presented as the tea ceremonies it depicts. But her feelings for her mistress are never reciprocated and as tensions mount in the household Aurelia begins to realise that to the world around her she will never be anything but an outsider.Ī lushly detailed, spellbinding story, The Teahouse Fire is an unforgettable debut. Knowing only a few words of Japanese she hides in a tea house and is adopted by the family who own it: gradually falling in love with both the tea ceremony and with her young mistress, Yukako.Īs Aurelia grows up she devotes herself to the family and its failing fortunes in the face of civil war and western intervention, and to Yukako's love affairs and subsequent marriage. When Aurelia flees the fire that kills her missionary uncle and leaves her orphaned and alone in nineteenth-century Japan, she has no idea how quickly her wish will be answered. What I asked for? Any life but this one.' 'When I was nine, in the city now called Kyoto, I changed my fate. Original, impeccably written and incredibly moving, The Teahouse Fire is a wonderful debut novel in the vein of Memoirs of a Geisha.

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery