Off My Rocker:

Recommendations from a Book Nut

Tea Time
(March 2007)

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." The sentence above is attributed to the late C. S. Lewis, creator of the Narnia Chronicles. The first title on this list of fiction involving tea might have satisfied even Lewis on the criteria given.

TEA ROSE, by Jennifer Donnelly

This is a big (544 pages) Soap Opera of a book that causes one’s inner sentimental twit to reach for another hanky even as one’s inner cynic rolls its eyes.

In London’s poverty stricken East Side Fiona and Joe, who both work horrible hours for pittances and who are in love from day one, dare to dream big. Shilling by shilling they pool their savings against the day they can afford to rent and stock a tea shop of their own.

Disaster strikes when Fiona’s father is murdered to prevent his organizing the London dockers into a union. The loss of his wages plunges this hard-working family from respectable working poor into abject poverty. The family all move into one room in the infamous Whitechapel district; mother and youngest child become ill; the eldest son adds to his poor wages by professional fighting, and Fiona continues to work long hours as a tea-packer for the evil Burton tea empire. Life goes from bad to worse as Fiona’s mother is murdered by the Ripper when she leaves the room they’ve all been living in to fetch a doctor for the baby; the baby soon follows her mother in death and the eldest son is found floating in the Thames. To cap all Joe breaks Fiona’s heart.

Joe may have failed her, murderers may be after her but Fiona still has a dream. She flees to America to live with her uncle Michael and learn shop-keeping from him only to find his shop up for auction and him, having given in to a grief his own, a drunk.

Fiona is determined to make good and pulls herself and her last remaining family up by their bootstraps. She not only turns her uncle’s shop around, but opens others and launches a line of highly successful tea houses as well.

She becomes a very wealthy woman and marries a viscount but her heart, what’s left of it, still belongs to Joe.

Will she ever meet him again? And if she should, could she possibly forgive his perfidy?

FLOWER BOY, by Karen Roberts

That children must be taught prejudice is clear in this tale of masters and servants on a Ceylonese Tea Plantation.

Chandi, the son of the housekeeper sees no reason why the white plantation manager’s new baby daughter should not become his best friend; as she grows up, neither does Rose-Lizzie. However many, both Ceylonese and British see this relationship as contravening the natural order and indicative of the moral decay of the age. Nonetheless the children are supported in their innocent devotion by Chandi’s mother and Rose- Lizzie’s father until world war forces them apart.

Do we learn much about tea production? Unfortunately, no (Rosalind Laker, where are you when we need you?). But for a tender yet clear-eyed look at the stupidities of racial and cultural prejudice, this one is a winner.