[.ca] Tea (ISBN 0704346990)

From Amazon.com:
Stacey D'Erasmo will be a familiar name to anyone who reads the Village Voice. During the years she worked at that quintessential alternative weekly, her beautiful, trenchant essays were among the paper's real drawing cards. Writing on a wide variety of topics--from the brainlessness of certain "do me" feminists to the arrest of ex-'60s radical Katherine Ann Power--D'Erasmo always managed to distill her response into a few devastating elements, her prose driven by quiet rage and an impatient, electric poetry. Like the political writing of Joan Didion, these have proven to be unforgettable essays that deserve to be collected soon. All of which brings us to Tea, D'Erasmo's first work of fiction. Essentially a coming-of-age tale, it's divided into three periods in the life of one Isabel Gold--from girlhood through her early 20s. The first section, "Morning," is weakest, full of the familiar tropes of damaged childhood: the beautiful suicidal mother, the passive, clever narrator who keeps staring out the car window. But as the book picks up, D'Erasmo sharpens her focus, and Isabel's world takes on a vibrant particularity and humor. Here, for instance, is a slyly hilarious description of a film project she and her girlfriend are working on: Their film was experimental; it incorporated all the theories they both knew about film, but, they both felt certain, went beyond those theories.... It didn't have a title yet; they couldn't find the phrase that encompassed, or referenced, all the myriad things their film was. It was political. It was nonlinear. It was diffuse. It made use of film as film. Passages like this call to mind the early-1990s film Go Fish, which also took place in an East Coast world of smart, gay women just out of college who are settling into an urban subculture and making homes in a city where their desires can be easily expressed and absorbed. Fans of that film's liberal-arts-grad realism will welcome Tea. But readers who have anxiously followed D'Erasmo's work may chafe when coming across details such as Pier 1 rattan chairs, La-Z-Boy recliners, and Hill Street Blues--specifics that can date and sometimes diminish this intermittently powerful work. --Emily White

dilute:
written well enough, but a pretty exhausted theme and flat, undeveloped characters. not really worth the bother.

awesome:
I've seen some negative comments about this book, but I loved it. I felt I could really relate to a lot of Isabel's feelings. I just thought it was a very well-written book and I strongly recommend it.

This "Tea" is too weak for for me!:
While this book has gotten some strong regonition and kudos in the community it did nothing for me. The book is more character than plot driven, and the characters are not that interesting! I really thought this book would focus more on Isabel and her relationship whith her mother as she relects back on her time spent with her as she grows up. And how that relationship shapes her adult life as a lesbian. Her mother's death should be a catlyst but is a rather flat, useless side note. I kept expecting this book to take off like a rocket but it keeps plodding along like a farm tractor on a empty field. In the end, this book left me more frustrated and angry over the time I wasted on it.

A beautifully written "coming of age" debut:
Having glanced at the other reviews of this book, I'm not surprised at the full range of stars - one to five. To be perfectly honest, I felt much like each and every one of the reviews at different parts of this book. I didn't really know where the book was going, found it wonderfully character-driven instead of plot-driven, got angry at all of the characters, and so on. The phrase "coming of age" has been beaten to death in the world of book reviews, but I can't think of another way to describe this novel. The sheer damage done to a child when its mother mentions she'd like to die - and later commits suicide, sets this story off on a unique spiral. The daughter, Isabel, grows under the vague shadow of this mother's suicide and with only the ephemeral bits and pieces she remembers of her mother: a love of theatre and movies, tennis, and, obviously, tea. Isabel seems to try to bring those tiny bits - not enough to make a full picture of her mother - into her life at every major juncture. She imagines what gifts her mother could give her at each birthday, for example. She drifts quite a bit through life, without a whole lot of focus, in a way that can be alternately maddening and sad. Somehow, this book managed to keep my attention and my empathy, even though I was often quite frustrated with Isabel and most of her friends - most of which are shallow and/or lacking in self-esteem. In part, it was the language - the text in this book is just beautiful. But though not a plot-driven book, the character of Isabel was also enough for me: she was by no means a perfect individual, and it was engrossing to wait and see if she could piece enough together from her ideas and half-rememberings to form a life of her own, free from under the very same half-ideas and rememberings she thinks she needs. I enjoyed this - don't get me wrong. For all the various frustrations, it felt right to me on some level that led to real satisfaction in the reading. But I can easily see how it would not be for everyone. 'Nathan

A beautifully raw novel:
At first, "Tea" did not hook me like so many other stories have. I felt that it was vague and stale, D'Erasmo only partially achieving the artistic storyline that was obviously being attempted. However, by the time I reached the second section, "Afternoon," I could not set the book down. What at first had seemed mundane and ordinary had taken on a new shape. I began to realize that the beauty of D'Erasmo's story was in its simplicity. An unexpected intimacy with Isabel, the main character, had been established, and I was eager to read along, to watch her discover life and loss. In no way was Isabel perfect. She was confused and idiosyncratic -- an inquistive, introspective, ordinary child who grew to be a resiliant, astute, yet ordinary twenty-something with a passionate will to survive. The beauty of D'Erasmo's writing comes through the simplicity it conveys, through both form and content. The words are raw, yet powerful.