Teahouse Fire - Softcover

Ellis Avery studied the Japanese tea ceremony for five years in New York and Kyoto, and now teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Village Voice, Kyoto Journal, LIT and Pacific Reader and has been performed at New York's Expanded Arts Theatre. She lives in New York City.

Those expecting another great audio, like Elaine Erika Davis's rendition of Memoirs of a Geisha, are sure to be disappointed, but the plodding pace of this new work of history cloaked under a fictional kimono is not the fault of Barbara Caruso but of its author. The minute details of the tea ceremony as it was transformed by historical events are not interspersed with enough plot for Caruso to keep the story moving. Unfortunately, Aurelia's obsession with Yukako, who saved her from the sad fate of European orphans in a strange land, is the subplot of Yukako's drive to save the tea ceremony from obscurity. Caruso gives Aurelia's voice all the wide-eyed wonder of Gulliver among the Lilliputians, but since Aurelia recounts her life in her old age, this tone is a bit forced. Yukako and other women are nicely individualized, but men tend to grunt out their words. Listeners fascinated by Japanese history will be rewarded by a compelling look at an elegant tradition that is sadly too slow and ritualized for Americans who measure life in nanoseconds.
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