Prior to Sen's involvement, women had rarely been part of the service, or were outright forbidden to participate.Īlthough The Tea House Fire was very loosely based on Sen, it is a bildungsroman told from the perspective of the fictional character Aurelia Bernard. Yukako changed the fate of the tea ceremony in the late 1800s by bringing it into the curriculum of the newly established girls' school. It's an intricately imagined world of shifting politics and power, changing class and gender roles, with a lush backdrop of shoji-screened tea houses, geishas draped in 12-layered kimonos, and lacquered palanquins bearing members of the emperor's family.Īvery was inspired to write the novel after researching the true story of a woman named Sen Yukako. This artful debut novel from Ellis Avery, a Columbia University creative writing teacher who studied Japanese tea ceremony for five years, tells the epic story of a 19th-century Japan in flux, just as it's opening to the West. One of the most baffling things about The Tea House Fire is why it hasn't gotten more press. Review | The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
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