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Today, "Love is a slow-infusing tea" by Christine Cayol was published on October 13, 2022 by Éditions Hervé Chopin
Cécile "SeriaLectrice", contributor to the 20 Minutes Books reading group, recommends
Love is a slowly infusing tea
by Christine Cayol, published on October 13, 2022 by Éditions Hervé Chopin.
His favorite quote:
Chao begins by pouring hot water on the chubby teapot which changes color, then he pours the water over the leaves which unfold at the bottom, waits a short time, deposits the nectar in a glass jar in which he plunges his nose .
Then he delicately takes a bowl between thumb and forefinger, pours the tea into it, puts it back on the flooded tray, waits some more.
Finally, he approaches Inès, so that she smells what he himself announces as a mixture of copper and wooded earth.
Why this book?
Because this book is a moment of sweetness.
In this novel, Christine Cayol approaches the notion of love in a completely unexpected way.
A fusional love, marked by the spirituality of the two characters.
A very poetic, tender and intense love.
Because Christine Cayol's pen is of
absolute tenderness, full of serenity and very modest at the same time.
It's not a romance novel, it's much more than that!
It is a novel that leads us to reflect on the strength of the feeling of love.
Because this book also addresses the notion of difference
.
Difference linked to disability, linked to the clash of Eastern and Western cultures.
Differences that the characters of this novel manage to overcome.
Because in this novel we get to know
Chinese customs, the weight of traditions, with their discretion and restraint even in times when talking would be redemptive and therapeutic.
We discover the power of the family in the construction of one's own life.
Because this book brings a touch of philosophy.
Christine Cayol leads the reader to question our own beliefs, our culture.
On how we could adapt in a country whose habits and customs are so different from ours.
And about the love between two fundamentally different people.
About deep and sincere love.
Love is a slow-infusing tea is an image that wonderfully illustrates the words of this beautiful novel.
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
Chao is a young Chinese man with a disfigured face following a domestic accident.
He ends up leaving his country and leaves behind him the ancestral traditions of his country.
In France, he will meet Inès and this predestined meeting will change his daily life.
Characters.
Chao, a 27-year-old Chinese who left his country to come and live in France.
Inès, a French woman married with two children.
A psychologist, her profession is misunderstood by Chao who believes in traditional Chinese medicine.
Places.
Paris, near the Butte Chaumont, is where much of the plot takes place.
We also travel to China to discover Chao's past and his life before he left for France.
The time.
The plot takes place mainly in the late 1990s. But we also go back and forth to the past, to find anecdotes about Chao's grandparents.
The author.
Christine Cayol is a philosopher by training.
She has lived in Beijing since 2004. She wrote many philosophical essays before publishing this first novel.
This book was read with
great serenity.
The pace of the novel is quite slow, without being boring.
It is a novel that awakens in us tranquility and calm.
The slowness of the narrative allows the words to slowly infuse into our minds.
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