Stephen McCauley, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, James Morrison, and Jonathan Strong on The Avalanche Teahouse

"The Avalanche Teahouse is a beautifully written, utterly absorbing novel. I was transported to the remote mountain setting by Stephen Bottum's first masterful paragraph and even now, days after reading the final page, have not been able to leave." -Stephen McCauley

"Stephen Bottum's dreamy novel, The Avalanche Teahouse, is addictive reading. The mountain setting, the wonderfully unique and utterly believable mother/daughter team running the teahouse, and the quiet drama that Bottum unfolds so skillfully kept me reading too late at night. I especially love how his characters don't do what you expect them to do, how they're characters you don't get to see in fiction, except here, and how much I wanted to keep hearing about their minds and hearts. I could stay in this setting, and with these characters, for much longer. But of course that's a sign of a wonderful novel -- leave them wanting more. -Lucy Jane Bledsoe

"This tightly-packed short novel is a funny and flavorful portrait of a remote mountain refuge for hikers and skiers, but it's also an intricate puzzle box that carefully and skillfully springs loose its deep secrets about past deaths and present loves." -Jonathan Strong

"The Avalanche Teahouse combines the delicacy of a fable with the scope of an epic. Observing its large cast of quirky, endearing characters with wry and exacting attentions, Stephen Bottum brings a miniaturist's perception to bear on this loveably eccentric community, and his eye misses no foible or self-deception, though this unflinching gaze remains a kindly one all the same. A site of repose and tranquility, the teahouse in question, as the title suggests, is also constantly poised on the cusp of catastrophe - and this warm-hearted, tough-minded story of the endless quest for personal security amid conditions of general precarity is just the tale for our troubled times." -James Morrison

Comments

[Preston webb]

I've read this book and it is a very good read. I would recommend it to anyone.