Letter from a Tea Garden by Ali Oliver ~ Book Tour Review
{This book was kindly gifted to me in exchange for an honest review and a place on the book tour. This article contains an affiliate link.}
Hello Readers,
It’s my turn today on the book tour for Abi Oliver’s Letter from a Tea Garden and I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on this book with you. The tour started on the 14th of July and is running until the 4th of August. I’ve listed all the details at the end of this article if you’d like to know more.
But first, let me tell you the synopsis so you know what the book is about:
1965, an English country mansion.
Eleanora Byngh is not in a good state. Wedded to the whisky bottle and with her house crumbling round her ears, her days seem destined to follow a lonely (and grumpy) downhill path.
When the post brings an unexpected invitation to return to the Indian tea gardens of her childhood. Eleanora risks breaking open painful memories of her younger years, lived across a tumultuous century.
As relationships with her new-found family face their own challenges, she is offered fresh truths, the chance of love and unexpected new life - if she is prepared to take them.
Before I get into my thoughts about this book, I do want to just make you aware of some content warnings:
Infant death / miscarriage
Alcoholism
Effects of World War II ~ in India particularly / physically and mentally
Partition
So this isn’t the easiest of reads by any means, so tread carefully if you struggle with any of the above.
I will be completely honest and say I did struggle a bit to get in to the flow of reading this book when I first picked it up. That was more than likely a “me issue” as I was dealing with some high fatigue levels when I first began reading it, so found it slow going as I couldn’t read as much as I usually can in one go. But eventually I was able to read a bit more each time I picked it up and began to feel like I needed to keep reading just to see if everything would turn out alright in the end, because boy did Eleanora need to catch a break from life!
We meet her living in England in the mid-1960’s with her dogs and her old nanny turned friend, Persi {Marguerite Persimmon} Eleanora is struggling with alcoholism and is basically at rock bottom with seemingly no hope of turning things around. That is until she receives a letter from her nephew, Roderick and his wife, inviting her to come to India where he works at one of the tea gardens. They’re the only family she truly has left and so, albeit reluctantly at first, she decides to make the trip, accompanied by Persi.
The book does jump around a little bit to different time periods in Eleanora’s life, but the year and location are well noted at the beginning of each chapter, if they’ve changed from the previous one, which made it easier to keep track of where I was in the stream of the story. But essentially from Eleanora and Persi arriving in India, it really becomes and feels like a huge nostalgia trip down memory lane as Eleanora remembers her life in India as a child through to adulthood. Personally, I’ve never been to India but Abi Oliver’s descriptive writing style as Eleanora rediscovers the places of her youth made me feel like I was right beside her, listening as she told her story ~ you can really tell that Abi has a strong connection to the country.
As main characters go, Eleanora was an interesting one and I found myself both liking and disliking her at times. There were moments when I wanted to shake some sense into her and other times when I was heartbroken for her. I thought her alcoholism was handled well and realistic as addition is a daily struggle and I felt it simmered in the background of the chapters in which Eleanora is with her family in India, always present even though it’s not always win the spotlight.
There’s a number of characters around Eleanora that really helped to flesh out the world and the memories being recalled. I especially enjoyed Persi and her friendship with Eleanora, it endures a lot and remains pretty strong even though they’re a part for many years. You learn a lot about what Persi was doing and went through at different time periods through Eleanora and while I liked that and it showed that this was very much Eleanora’s story to tell, I would have loved a few chapters from Persi’s perspective when they were separate ~ but that is purely my preference, I feel the same about other books I’ve read and not having Persi’s perspective in no way takes away anything from this book.
While reading about Eleanora’s life in India, there’s a number of historical events that she lived through ~ mainly the effect World War II had on the country and then the Partition. These are parts of history that weren’t taught in school when I studied history and honestly, they really need to be. I learned so much about that time period in India through Abi Oliver’s descriptive writing and highlight just how bad it really was ~ it was very hard reading and I did have to skim over a little bit of it at times. But honestly, it needed to be hard reading because in reality it was a thousand times worse and it shouldn't be forgotten, so I’m so glad that Abi Oliver highlighted this time period in this book and did an excellent job of showing what it must have been like to live through.
Just a little side note on this: At the time of reading this book, I was also watching Ms Marvel, which also did an excellent job of highlighting how bad Partition was. I felt because I was learning about the time through Letter from a Tea Garden, I better understood what was going on in the episodes of Ms Marvel that really focused on it.
I feel strange saying that I enjoyed this book because the subject matter is so heavy and in many ways, really important. But I enjoyed reading it from the point of view of learning more about the time periods it covers in India and more about the country itself. I also enjoyed the setting of the Tea Garden and the small community / family feel that gave the book and the effect that had on Eleanora.
Thank you so much to Literally PR for sending me a copy of this book and I’m so happy I could be a part of the book tour for this one.
Stay Safe. Read a Book.
L x
If you’d like to find out more about this book and Abi Oliver, you can find her on social media via the handle @AbiWriterOliver. If you’d like to find out what everyone else on the tour thought of this book, below are all the dates and social media handles for all the book reviewers:
14th July: Dee ~ @DeeMGroocock
15th July: Karen ~ @KittyKatAuthor
16th July: Anasua ~ @a_n_a_s_u_a
17th July: Joanna ~ @thelibraryofimagination
18th July: Rhianydd ~ @rhianyddmorris
19th July: Tig ~ @tigs_bookcase
20th July: Esther ~ @peacocks.bookreview.5
21st July: Kelly ~ @enjoyingbooksagain
22nd July: Courtney ~ @courtney_in_a_book
23rd July: Suzanne ~ @bookread2day
24th July: Tam ~ @reading_tamishly
25th July: Annie ~ @Williams13Anne
26th July: Katy ~ @kkecreads
27th July: Riya ~ @CosmicLatte45
28th July: Linda ~ @LindaHill50Hill
29th July: Karen ~ @un_lucky_clover
30th July: Cally ~ @Callpwatts
31st July: Louise ~ @louiseslittleife
1st Aug: Jo ~ @JMSimpsonauthor
2nd Aug: Vanessa ~ @nessakt
3rd Aug: Karen ~ @karteabooks
4th Aug: Aditya ~ @NhiHoonAditya
