Gina Berriault. The Tea Ceremony.

Garrett, Daniel

Gina Berriault. The Tea Ceremony. Leonard Gardner, foreword. Washington, D.C. Shoemaker & Hoard (Avalon, distr.). 2003. xiv + 200 pages. $25. ISBN 1-59376-004-3

IN "THE TEA CEREMONY," one of Gina Berriault's well-observed, delicately written stories, a teacher who has enjoyed Japan returns to her American classroom full of memories and souvenirs, including a kimono. One of her students, a boy, inquires about its price. "It's not polite to ask those kinds of questions, she said, so we don't answer them," reports the narrator. Money, like passion, is the fundamental stuff of social life--and literature. "The Tea Ceremony," the title story of this collection of fiction and nonfiction, is actually focused on the friendship of two girls, one outwardly beautiful and one more ordinary but in whom there are apprehensions of various kinds of beauty, the beauty of creativity and of human connections. It is also a story about how adult standards of value come to be imposed on children even as adults fail to live up to those standards (a teacher shows a favoritism that might be wounding to others, though this is also a genuine affection that helps a particular child sustain a sense of self during a difficult time; and a status-discerning mother wants her lovely daughter to pick more obviously impressive friends, and this mother is publicly embarrassed by the disclosure of her own sordid, adulterous affair). The injury and resentment one initially expects to occur between the girls does not occur; instead, one is made to see how strength in one area may be accompanied by vulnerability in another. This personal meaning is shadowed by a great public event, the Japanese attack on the United States.

Berriault, born of Latvian and Lithuanian parents, was influenced by Chekhov and is appreciative of various writers--including Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, Primo Levi, Raymond Carver, and black and Hispanic writers. In "Don't I Know You?," an interview near the end of the book, Berriault remarks about her own work: "If there is a recurring theme, it's an attempt at compassionate understanding. Judgement is the prevalent theme in our society, but it's from fiction we learn compassion and comprehension." In one of her stories, "The Vault," Berriault deals with an obscure writer who receives an invitation to donate his manuscripts to a university collection, something that reveals his small lonely life, anticipation of death, pride, and a wry humor. Berriault is truthful. A proposed novel's first chapter, "The Flood Again," is here; the chapter, about a young actress's affair with a powerful man, offers a mild yet genuine intimacy. "The Naked Luncheon," on the origin of topless bars, is a piece of social history; "The Last Firing Squad" (about executioners) is, inevitably, about humanity's darker corners; and "The Essential Rumi" is about the difficulty of picking a favorite book. These three pieces of nonfiction indicate the scope of this collection, which would seem random were it not for the unique consciousness and talent of the writer that pervade it.

Daniel Garrett

Richmond Hill, New York