7 /10 1 Votes7
Country United States Publication date 2006 OCLC 226973148 | 3.5/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print Originally published 2006 ISBN 978-0-09-951618-7 Genres Fiction, Historical novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pages 390 pp (first edition, paperback original) Awards Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction Fiction books The Commoner, Babyji, Stone Butch Blues, Tipping the Velvet, Snow Flower and the Secre | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Teahouse Fire is a novel by Ellis Avery set in late nineteenth century Japan published by Riverhead in the US in 2006 and to be published by Random House in the UK as a paperback original.
Contents
Plot summary
Set in late nineteenth century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is the story of Aurelia, a young French-American girl who, after the death of her mother and her missionary uncle, finds herself lost and alone and in need of a new family. Knowing only a few words of Japanese she hides in a Japanese tea house and is adopted by the family who own it: gradually falling in love with both the Japanese tea ceremony and with her young mistress, Yukako.
As 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. But her feelings for mistress seem doomed never to be 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.