Bridgman reviewed Tea: a novel by Stacey D'Erasmo
Review of 'Tea' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
When I saw [a:Stacey D'Erasmo|166435|Stacey D'Erasmo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1266618200p2/166435.jpg]'s 2000 novel [b:Tea A Novel|18046991|Tea A Novel|Stacey D'Erasmo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1370688261l/18046991.SX50.jpg|1154868] on the shelf of inexpensive books my library was selling I remember thinking that the last thing I needed was another book, especially one by an author I'd never heard of. But after I gave the first page a glance and saw that it took place in a Philadelphia suburb, which is where I live, I bought it. The price was nearly nothing and I always have room for more books on the shelves.
I'm glad I did. Tea is a coming of age story and the girl whose story it tells is my age, i.e., early 60s. It starts with that character, Isabel, hitting adolescence and ends when she's twenty-two. It's in three parts and its 317 pages fly by. (It's physically a small book, about five by eight inches.)
If you're wondering …
When I saw [a:Stacey D'Erasmo|166435|Stacey D'Erasmo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1266618200p2/166435.jpg]'s 2000 novel [b:Tea A Novel|18046991|Tea A Novel|Stacey D'Erasmo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1370688261l/18046991.SX50.jpg|1154868] on the shelf of inexpensive books my library was selling I remember thinking that the last thing I needed was another book, especially one by an author I'd never heard of. But after I gave the first page a glance and saw that it took place in a Philadelphia suburb, which is where I live, I bought it. The price was nearly nothing and I always have room for more books on the shelves.
I'm glad I did. Tea is a coming of age story and the girl whose story it tells is my age, i.e., early 60s. It starts with that character, Isabel, hitting adolescence and ends when she's twenty-two. It's in three parts and its 317 pages fly by. (It's physically a small book, about five by eight inches.)
If you're wondering what the life of a girl who loves the theater and goes from living in a distant suburb to New York City, where she and her girlfriend live in a funky apartment, cut each other's hair, and fight over the screenplay to a cockamamie movie you know will never get made, this is the perfect book.
Nothing was as beautiful as Philadelphia, where everything was old and modern at the same time. Nothing was so fantastically loud, reverberating inside Isabel's head all week long as she idled behind the counter at Pier 1, not really there, not really anywhere as she waited, suspended in motion, to get back to Philadelphia. Isabel wore her hair in the new way all the time now. She stopped eating candy bars out of the basket. She smoked more cigarettes than ever. She began going to The Well not only on Saturdays and Sundays, but on Wednesday nights, too. Riding on the bus, she watched Philadelphia flow by: its few ornate buildings, its row houses, its peeling billboards flashing then disappearing as the bus curved through the low, hot, brick city. Once she saw a man running with a baby in his arms, dodging cars to get somewhere, frantic. That was a poem.