HALLIE EPHRON: I was blown away by Emily Arsenault's clever and brilliant (really) THE BROKEN TEAGLASS in which a pair of lexicographers find mysterious clues in old files. She's a literary writer who knows how to spinout suspense. Now she's out with THE LEAF READER, a young adult mystery about a high school girl whose tea-leaf reading abilities draw her into a missing person case and deep into danger.
Here's what Kirkus had to say in a starred review:
“Arsenault’s page-ripping whodunit not only will send readers running for their tea kettles, but packs the thrill of self-discovery and acceptance amid base adversity: a rich, rewarding teen debut.” – Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
Welcome to Jungle Red, Emily! Please tell us about tea-leaf reading. So fascinating. How did you get interested in it?
EMILY ARSENAULT: My first introduction to tea-leaf reading was in 1999, when
my husband (then boyfriend) introduced me to his grandmother Ruth in Arizona.
He remembered that she did readings when he was a kid, and asked her to
demonstrate for me.
We tore open Lipton teabags and made tea
with their contents. (I know tea connoisseurs and practiced tea-leaf readers
might be a little aghast that we didn’t use real loose-leaf tea.) When we were
done drinking, Ruth studied our tea dregs.
“I see a lot of dogs,” she said of
the clumped formations in my cup. “You must have good friends.” I would later
learn that she said this to almost everyone, in almost every reading she gave.
We didn’t get to see Ruth that often, because we lived on
the other side of the country, in Massachusetts. But from that time until her
death in 2007, whenever we’d visit, we’d ask for a reading. Sometimes she
seemed embarrassed by the request, and often seemed to rely on stock
predictions (It looks like you’re going
to get your wish. But not exactly in the way you wanted it . . . It
looks like you’re going on a trip . . . probably going home. . . . I see a lot of dogs . . . ).
But
almost every time, she’d look deep into the cup, her eyes would light up, and
she’d say something that would later turn out to be uncannily prophetic.
Most memorable to me was a time she said, I think you’re going to have a dispute about
a pet. But it’s not really the pet’s fault.
A few weeks later an eccentric neighbor of ours started
coming unhinged because our cat was sneaking onto her porch and eating her
cats’ food. She’d call us up to scream about how mean our cat was to her cats.
She was going to call the pound, she said, or take our cat “for a ride” if he
kept coming onto her porch.
One of the last times we saw her, Ruth gave us a small,
battered paperback—How to Read Tea
Leaves, by Joyce Wilson, published in 1969—and told us we could keep it. Over
the following years, my husband and I would occasionally give each other tea
leaf readings. We’d have fun joking around with it, but neither of us seemed to
have the instinct for it that Ruth had.
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Like many tea leaf reading guides, Wilson’s book lists all
kinds of possible symbols one might find in a cup. (E.g. a fish might mean good
news, an hourglass could mean imminent danger, a moon crescent can symbolize
good luck.) And from this book we picked up this very basic way of reading a
cup: symbols on the rim represent things happening in the immediate future,
while symbols in the bottom of the forecast farther into the future.
I’ve read
several tea leaf-reading guides, and this is absolutely not the only way of
looking at a cup—but it’s the general principle I’ve used, in real and fictional
readings.
Over the years, I would come across Wilson’s book on our
shelf and flip through it, thinking: I’d
like to have a character who does tea leaf readings in a book someday. But I
couldn’t quite decide how to make it work. Until I tried it in a YA novel.
I’ve always been
interested in YA. In fact, my first completed (unpublished) manuscript was a YA
book. But the result was a story more depressing than I ultimately wanted to
inflict on young readers. You see, I was a fairly miserable teenager and didn’t
really know how to write teenagers any other way.
I’ve often thought of my sullen high school years and
wondered, Wouldn’t I have been a lot
happier if I’d just gotten a hobby? (A hobby besides writing gloomy poems,
to be clear.)
So the next time I tried to write a YA book—more than a
decade after my first attempt—I gave my main character a hobby. A weird hobby—tea
leaf reading. But a hobby nonetheless. And from there I was able to develop a
character whom I thought wouldn’t completely depress my readers.
I gave Marnie a lot of circumstances that resemble my own in
high school. I grew up in a Connecticut town that bears some resemblance
to Marnie’s. My position within that town
resembled Marnie’s in some vague ways. I’d rather keep the comparisons vague,
but Marnie’s house is a little worn down, and her family is a little offbeat. But
she is far more laid back about these things than I ever was. Her tea leaf
reading is her way of saying, “Yes, I’m a bit of a weirdo in this town. But I’m
just going to bide my time and embrace that.” She has a sense of humor about
her situation. She realizes she can have fun with it, and manages to see past
it. In addition to her hobby, I gave Marnie Ruth’s gift of perception.
Of course, Marnie’s gives her friends and classmates tea
leaf readings for fun—and maybe for a little bit of attention. But when a guy
named Matt Cotrell—whose best friend disappeared last year—asks for a reading,
things get a little more serious. As Marnie’s readings become darker and more
prescient, she is pulled into a mystery—a mystery that appears to involve
murder.
HALLIE: Does this sound irresistible or what? Have any of you out there had your tea leaves read? Or Tarot cards? Or even your palm? I hope it didn't lead to a murder, but were there any epiphanies?
Note from yesterday: Libby Dodd is the winner of Edith Maxwell's new book!
Note from yesterday: Libby Dodd is the winner of Edith Maxwell's new book!
