‘the Tea Girl Of Hummingbird Lane,’ By Lisa See

Lisa See’s latest novel, “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane,” takes place in the fascinating world of pu’er tea, from the picking of tea leaves to the distribution of aged, fermented tea cakes in Southern California. In an early chilling scene, Li-yan’s mother, who is a midwife, orders a father to kill his twin boy and girl within minutes of their birth. The rest of the novel is strong, but sometimes feels off balance due to the different narrative techniques used to tell the mother and daughter’s diverging stories. See doesn’t always trust the reader’s ability to make the leap into an Akha girl’s mind, and pushes too hard to generate understanding. [...] Li-yan’s repeated use of the term “ethnic minority” to refer to herself feels forced, a shortcut to make sure the reader understands Li-yan’s outsider position among the Han majority, but one that doesn’t allow us to actually feel what are presumably feelings of alienation. [...] Haley’s story of mixed emotions is told with almost no framing via quotidian documents: doctor’s notes when she’s a sick baby, curated emails by her adoptive mother, a clearly autobiographical short story written by Haley in preparation for drafting a college essay. See breathes life into a hidden world to which many of her readers don’t have access, just as she’s done in “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” “Shanghai Girls” and her many other Chinese historical novels. “Snow Flower,” for example, revealed 19th century Hunan Province, a world in which a secret script, nu shu, was developed for women, and where some young girls were paired with emotional matches that stayed with them through their lives. [...] the novel is an alluring escape, a satisfying and vivid fable that uses an Akha belief to tap into our own longings for coincidence.