The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Rating: 5/5
First time read
Outstanding. I love love looved this book. I also haven't stopped drinking green tea...I always was a peppermint tea in the morning kinda gal, but now it's green tea all day, err day. Lisa See has always been one of my favorite authors, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan has been a long-time repeat read of mine, but, this book was just stunning.
I'm a big fan of historical fiction, especially when it draws from true events so you can google and be sucked into the vortex of facts that you kind of sort of just read a book on. Li-yan is a wonderfully future-looking narrator and protagonist, with her mother working as the perfect juxtaposition with her firm cultural beliefs. Li-yan's later years are so much richer because we are able to see her early childhood and watch her grow and come into her own.
The importance of her dowry is an important symbol in the book and loved watching the change in Li-yan's attitude and feelings toward it. I purposely didn't read the summary of the book before starting it so despite the title including "Tea," I wasn't prepared for the deep dive into the world and history of the tea and its industry. It was exciting to realize where the dowry fits in as you get further into the book.
I don't normally enjoy epistolary works (when books are written out of correspondence between characters, like letters), but the interwoven chapters didn't bother me and I actually really enjoyed getting this other timeline in another format. It broke it up more and really stood out compared to Li-yan's chapters.
As always, See created a rich tapestry of history and characters, characters you're rooting for and ones you cry for. There's tea, there's orphanages, there's ethnic minorities and their way of living and beliefs, there's the Cultural Revolution seen from a new point of view. Really, it's all included and there's nothing more I could have asked for. I will recommend any See novel, but her latest is a gift to us all.
