Review: The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section, Karen Schechner reviews The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery. Schechner wonders why more has not been said about this beautiful book. Says Schechner:

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. 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.

The full review is here.