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Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1999)
Price: $5.49
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Brief Description
Detailed Description
Specifications
"Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we..." ...Softcover, 428+pp.
Condition: Very Good condition. (See...
Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel (Paperback)
by Arthur Golden
"Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we..."
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Description: Vintage, 1999. Softcover, 428+pp.
Condition: Very Good condition. (See my scan/photo)Tight binging without creases. No apparent marking to text pages which are clean and lightly tanned. Cover itself has some light edgewear, with more edgewear to edges of spine.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
According to Arthur Golden's absorbing first novel, the word "geisha" does not mean "prostitute," as Westerners ignorantly assume--it means "artisan" or "artist." To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia--and an M.A. in English--he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.
The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."
Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
"I wasn't born and raised to be a Kyoto geisha....I'm a fisherman's daughter from a little town called Yoroido on the Sea of Japan." How nine-year-old Chiyo, sold with her sister into slavery by their father after their mother's death, becomes Sayuri, the beautiful geisha accomplished in the art of entertaining men, is the focus of this fascinating first novel. Narrating her life story from her elegant suite in the Waldorf Astoria, Sayuri tells of her traumatic arrival at the Nitta okiya (a geisha house), where she endures harsh treatment from Granny and Mother, the greedy owners, and from Hatsumomo, the sadistically cruel head geisha. But Sayuri's chance meeting with the Chairman, who shows her kindness, makes her determined to become a geisha. Under the tutelage of the renowned Mameha, she becomes a leading geisha of the 1930s and 1940s. After the book's compelling first half, the second half is a bit flat and overlong. Still, Golden, with degrees in Japanese art and history, has brilliantly revealed the culture and traditions of an exotic world, closed to most Westerners. Highly recommended.
-?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From AudioFile
In 1929 young Chiyo's father sells her to a fashionable geisha house outside of Kyoto. Thereafter her life, touched with struggle, heartache and, finally, a kind of triumph, becomes a window on both her soul and on pre-war Japanese culture, which is fragmenting around her. Bernadette Dunne's readingof this world and its strange (to Western eyes) inhabitants traces across our vision like a landscape painting on silk. The cultivated refinement of her voice ranges effortlessly and credibly from the innocent nine-year-old Chiyo to the magnificent but subtle Nitta Sayuri, the geisha she inevitably becomes. By the end we can almost see and hear the beautiful Sayuri step lightly across the polished wooden floor of the teahouse in her richly brocaded kimono to pour saki for the chairman. P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Cherry blossomdelicate, with images as carefully sculpted as bonsai, this tale of the life of a renowned geisha, one of the last flowers of a kind all but eliminated by WW II, marks an auspicious, unusual debut. Japan is already changing, becoming industrialized and imperialistic, when in 1929 young Chiyo's fisherman father sells her to a house in Kyoto's famous Gion district. The girl's gray- eyed beauty is startling even in childhood, so much so that her training is impeded by the jealousy of her house's primary geisha, the popular, petty Hatsumomo. Caught trying to run away, Chiyo loses her trainee status until taken under the wing of Mameha, a bitter rival of Hatsumomo. Chiyo flourishes with Mameha as her guide, soon receiving her geisha name, Sayuri, and having her mentor skillfully arrange the two main events vital to a geisha's success: the sale of Sayuri's virginity (for a record price), and the finding of a sugar-daddy to pay her way. Seeing the implications of Japan's militarism, Mameha pairs Sayuri with the general in charge of army provisions, so that as WW II drags on she and her house have things no one else in Gion can obtain. After the war, with her general dead and others vying for her attention, Sayuri pines anew for the only man she ever loved--an electrical- corporation chairman whose kindness to a crying Chiyo years before altered the course of her future. He seems out of reach since his right-hand man and closest friend is her most ardent admirer, but in the end her long-thwarted happiness is accomplished. Though incomparable in its view of a geisha's life behind the scenes, the story loses immediacy as it goes along. When modern times eclipse Gion's sheltered world, the latter part of Sayuri's life--compared to the incandescent clarity of its first decades- -seems increasingly flat. (First printing of 75,000) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Entertainment Weekly
A fisherman's daughter transforms herself into the confident consort of powerful men, but she soon finds herself feuding with a scheming competitor. The arcane lore fascinates: What does a geisha wear beneath her kimono? Who may remove it and what will it cost him? Golden, a Japanese scholar, offsets the detail with high-toned prose. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"Astonishing . . . breathtaking . . . You are seduced completely." —Washington Post Book World
"Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut." —Newsweek
"A story with the social vibrancy and narrative sweep of a much-loved 19th century bildungsroman. . . . This is a high-wire act. . . . Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance." —The New Yorker
Review
"Astonishing . . . breathtaking . . . You are seduced completely." ?Washington Post Book World
"Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut." ?Newsweek
"A story with the social vibrancy and narrative sweep of a much-loved 19th century bildungsroman. . . . This is a high-wire act. . . . Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance." ?The New Yorker
Book Description
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.
Download Description
Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart of Gion - the geisha district of Kyoto - with its marvelous teahouses and theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples, and artists' streets. And we witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. But as World War II erupts and the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri, with little money and even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms. Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuance and vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers.
From the Publisher
"Wonderful, involving, intelligent, fascinating, and almost Dickensian in the way the characters inhabit the landscape, and the landscape permeates the characters. It's a unique, beautifully written book."
--Ann Beattie
"I still can't quite believe that an American male can so seamlessly enter the soul of a Japanese woman, and catch her world, its textures, its hopes, and its sinuous patter with such perfection. Memoirs of a Geisha evokes all the delicate steel of Kyoto's geisha culture with such uncanny fidelity that, after you've finished, you feel as if you've entered not just another world, but an extraordinary and foreign heart."
--Pico Iyer
"Sayuri tells her story with such gentle courtesy and determination that you are quickly brought under the spell of her character. She takes you by the hand and leads you into a world that is both formal and intimate, a world that I had only before glimpsed in the fleeting and beautiful images of traditional Japanese ink painting...Memoirs of a Geisha is a wonderful achievement."
--Julia Blackburn
"A haunting tale of a hidden world that could hold an audience spellbound through many an evening in a lantern-lit teahouse."
--Geraldine Brooks
"Memoirs of a Geisha is a masterpiece. Every detail on this canvas is fascinating, even arresting, while at the same time the bigger portrait--the story, the truth told, a life revealed--is spellbinding."
--Elinor Lipman --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Inside Flap Copy
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction?at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful?and completely unforgettable.
From the Back Cover
"Astonishing . . . breathtaking . . . You are seduced completely." --Washington Post Book World
"Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut." --Newsweek
"A story with the social vibrancy and narrative sweep of a much-loved 19th century bildungsroman. . . . This is a high-wire act. . . . Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance." --The New Yorker
About the Author
Arthur Golden was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was educated at Harvard College, where he received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an M.A. in Japanese history from Columbia University, where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. Following a summer at Beijing University, he worked in Tokyo, and, after returning to the United States, earned an M.A. in English from Boston University. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.
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86 of 100 people found the following review helpful:
 Fascinating culture - great read, June 3, 2005
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85 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
A Novel to Savor!!!, May 9, 2003
This is one of the most beautifully written novels of the past 20 or more years, and definitely one of my personal favorites. Arthur Golden, a student of Japanese art and language, paints a remarkably true-sounding account of one woman's training and practice as a geisha. There's not a false note in the writing: The characters, dialogue, and emotional content all ring true. Aside from some slightly plodding descriptions of the protagonist's introduction to the geisha district of Gion, the pacing is excellent. I kept waiting for Golden to slip, for some implausibility in character or plot development, some anachronism or "artistic license" that would have made me feel cheated-but it never happened. Without further research, it's difficult for me to comment on the book's historical and cultural accuracy, but it always felt true, and Golden's simple but powerful language is absolutely compelling. The book surpassed my already high expectations, and increased my appreciation of--and curiousity about--historical Japanese social structure in general, and geisha culture in particular. Above all, this is a completely satisfying book about perseverance within boundaries. Both the story and the writing are filled with grace, power, and beauty.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
A great listen!, January 7, 2006
I listened to this as an unabridged audiobook so my comments are specific to that.
Over the years I had always meant to read Memoirs of a Geisha and have had the paperback laying around on my shelves for some time. I'd picked it up a couple of times and read the first 20 pages or so but couldn't really get into it.
With the movie on the horizon, and with my preference for reading books before seeing movies, I decided to try the audio version of this. I'm really glad I did!
Memoirs tells the story of Chiyo, a little girl from a fishing village who, even at age 9, is startlingly beautiful with unusually light colored eyes. She is sold by her father into service as a maid in a geisha house in Kyoto, ultimately to be trained as a geisha herself. As she grows and matures, she clashes with the primary geisha of her house, the wicked and vindictive Hatsumomo, and finds a mentor in one of Hatsumomo's competitors. With her "older sister's" help, Chiyo is transformed into Sayuri, an accomplished and popular geisha who learns to "work the system" to achieve her independence.
My summary doesn't do justice to the nuances of the story. Arthur Golden draws a detailed and compelling portrait of Kyoto and pre-war Japanese society in general, and details the often hidden world of the geisha, women who are trained as living works of art, as much prized for their ability to make lively conversation, dance, sing and perform tea ceremonies as for their appearance. The mixture of exotica and the elements of soap opera--will Sayuri overcome the machinations of Hatsumomo to destroy her career before it starts? Will she ever get to spend any time with the man she is convinced she loves?--kept me listening attentively.
The leisurely and detailed storytelling lends itself well to unabridged audio. I would definitely recommend unabridged over abridged, as much of the beauty of the story is in the very details of background and scenery and the nitty gritty of geisha life that would be editted out in an abridged edition.
Bernadette Dunne is an excellent reader and performs the story in an authentic-sounding accented English. Her tone is perfect for the conversational tone of the story, where the narrator speaks to the reader as if in conversation, starting anecdotes with "You may remember that I told you about..." or "Now I have to tell you of (this or that custom). The effect of listening to this is of an intimate conversation with Sayuri-san, imparting to you the details of her fascinating life.
I highly recommend both this book and the audio version of it!
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59 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
 Enjoyable page turner, February 22, 2002 The speed with which this book gets read says something about it's depth. It's key strength is the factual account of the life a Gion Geisha in the 1920's. I feel like I took a quick course on Geishas. The weakness of the book lies in storytelling. I have no real attachments to any of the characters. Suyari pretty much gets life handed to her on a silver platter. She is a very uncompelling heroine with few admirable qualities other than her features. She is a great Geisha because she is beautiful, and because benefactors choose to present her as a great Geisha. She achieves nothing by her own devices, and lives only by the whims of others. The only character that I had empathy for is Nobu, whose story is never adequately told. I was disappointed by the ending, which was a little too "Hollywood." All this aside, "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a fun book to read. I enjoyed it. I recommend it. It is just not a book that moved me in any way other than entertainment.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Don't be fooled by the fine print, April 14, 2007
This book has been sitting on my "to be read" shelf for a long time, mainly because the teeny tiny little print that fills the pages to within half a centimeter of the edge filled me with trepidation at the apparently insurmountable task ahead. Fortunately, I took the coward's way out and watched the movie first, and this gave me the boost I needed to get started. Watching the movie first allowed me to put faces to the names, and to witness almost firsthand the intricacies of the rituals that are so intimately described in the book.
Suffice to say that I was completely captivated from Chapter one, and was even reluctant to put it down at the end. The novel tells the story of a young Japanese girl named Chiyo who is taken from her village in the 1930s and sent to Gion, to an okiya or geisha house. Her sister Satsu is also taken, but lacking Chiyo's striking beauty, she is sent to a house of ill repute. At first Chiyo dreams of finding Satsu and running away from Gion, but later realizes that this is never going to happen.
The resident geisha at her okiya is a jealous and arrogant woman named Hatsumomo, who sabotages Chiyo's progress towards becoming a geisha herself, leaving Chiyo in the unenviable position of being a maid for the rest of her life. Fortunately for Chiyo, a chance encounter with a wealthy businessman (known as the Chairman) opens new doors for her and this brief meeting changes the course of her life forever.
Soon, Hatsumomo's rival, an extremely popular and successful geisha named Mameha decides to take Chiyo under her wing as her little sister, and after the usual haggling over fees and royalties is completed, Chiyo finally gets her chance to continue her geisha training. An intense and vicious rivalry develops between the geisha "tag teams" of Hatsumomo and her trainee Pumpkin, and Mameha and Chiyo, who then assumes the geisha name Sayuri.
With the threefold purpose of defeating Hatsumomo, winning a wager, and paying off Sayuri's debts, Mameha orchestrates a bidding war between rich men for the apparently acceptable privilege of deflowering her young apprentice, the financial results of which set a new record in geisha history at the time.
Just when things seem to be settling down nicely, two events shatter the relative calm, and Sayuri finds herself torn emotionally by the reappearance of the Chairman, and then later, mentally and physically by the outbreak of World War II. After the War, she goes back to being a geisha, but has to choose between following her heart and following what seems to be the obvious path.
The film and the novel are different in several sections, even down to the ending, but of course the book provides a lot of important background information that could not be captured in the movie version, even though I'm not sure of the historical accuracy. I would strongly recommend them BOTH to anyone who is not familiar with the amazing gilded world of Geisha.
Amanda Richards, April 14, 2007
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84 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
 Orientalist Opportunism, May 16, 2002 Which brings us to the domain of "experience." Now, I would never argue that authors must rigidly hew to the parameters of their own experience and turn out one autobiographical book after another. When writing a character-filled book in the third person, for example, an author is called upon to imagine other minds, other realities, other lives, and this exercise of the empathetic imagination can be a wonderous thing. The problem comes when an author, like Golden, attempts to write an entire novel in the first person from the vantage of a person who is completely removed from himself in time, space, culture, and gender. This does not spring from a desire for authenticity: it is, in fact, nothing more than literary machismo. "Look!" he's shouting, "look what I can do!" And it simply doesn't ring true, except to people who know even less about the subject than the author does. I am neither a geisha, nor Japanese, nor a woman, but I have lived in Japan longer than Golden has and I would wager my Japanese is just as good or better. Although Golden gets many of the factual details right, there is so much about the tone and the psychological sketching here that simply "stinks of butter," as the Japanese used to say of Westerners a century ago. As a very serious student of Japanese literature, I can assure you that no Japanese would ever write like this, that is to say, like Dickens in a kimono. The novel is just too busy: too many characters, too much plotting, too much incident, and most damningly, too much naivete about the workings of the human heart. In fact, it should be made publicly known that the woman on whom Golden based this story sued him for misrepresentation and is in fact writing her OWN book to set things straight. She has her own pecuniary motivations, no doubt, but her criticism still stands. It's her life after all. It's good for Golden that so many people found this novel so ravishing and so interesting. He is a capable entertainer, and he knows the secret of entertainment: pander to your audience. Give them exoticism, but don't challenge their misconceptions. He spotted a market niche, he pulled off his high-wire act, and he's been amply rewarded. But if anybody thinks that this concoction attains the mighty beating heart of literature, let him or her think again.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A Tour de Force of Narrative Voice and Detail, February 24, 1998
Arthur Golden's Memoir of a Geisha is a tour de force of narrative voice, cultural detail, and style. The author's painstaking research shows itself only in the believability of his story and never slows the pace of this novel which, at its basest level, could be called a historical romance. But there is so much more contained within these pages than a genre novel. Readers will find a richly described life with layers of history, emotion, and a coming-of-age story that lasts a lifetime. Although the final chapter seems tacked and the extra details revealed there are coyly supplied despite the previous forthrightness of Satuyi, Golden can be forgiven these last pages after having delivered his treasure wrapped in silk.
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35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
 Supermarket Cinderella, May 7, 2001 · Hero or heroine must be born into poverty or come to it fairly quickly in the story. · Hero or heroine must possess extraordinary beauty and/or above-average intelligence. · Hero or heroine is subject to the most hideous trials and tribulations while still a child, and when you think nothing worse can happen to the creature, it does. · Hero or heroine possesses a heart of gold. · Hero or heroine has the opportunity to be equally evil to those that damaged him/her, but because s/he is compassionate, s/he refuses to. · Hero or heroine rises above adversity and survives all calamities · There is always a happy ending. "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a perfect example of the "Cinderella" format (some readers called it Oliver Twist, some Jane Eyre; it's all the same). Chiyo is an extremely beautiful child (the constant reference to her gray eyes became too much too soon) and very smart, whose father is a poor fisherman, not very bright, and whose mother is dying. She and her sister are sold and soon separated, and poor Chiyo (who will later change her name to Sayuri) suffers enormously for the next 400 pages or so. The best part of this book is its detailed descriptions of all things geisha, from makeup to hair to clothing to ceremonies to education to housing... After reading the book, i felt that i had learned a lot about this important subgroup of Japanese culture. I also enjoyed the prose, for the most part. As a person who sometimes has to explain foreign customs to others, i identified with the tone that Sayuri used when describing things. The story of young Chiyo is also quite entertaining, from her days in the tipsy house till she gets under Mameha's wing. After that, the story line goes downhill. The worst part, from a literary standpoint, is that the book is formulaic, and uses many artificial devices to keep the plot going. For example, how come Hatsumoto is so bent in destroying Chiyo from the moment she meets the poor girl, who is only 9 years old? Hatsumoto can't be that much older than Chiyo, yet she is machinating like an old witch, and we do not know exactly for what reason. Also, Chiyo's encounter with The Chairman is so brief, yet she is so affected by it for years and years to come. Even though when they met she was crying and her vision was blurry, she remembered his features like they were engraved in her brain. The Chairman and Hatsumoto are artifices to make the story move along. The flow, especially after Chiyo becomes Sayuri, is really poor. The intrigues and the "convenient" situations and coincidences that take place really detract from the story. The final pages are particularly bad. All of a sudden, the author wanted to wrap it up and there is absolutely no development and scenes just do not make sense. I can't really explain some of my objections without spoiling the end, but all things related to The Chairman were so very unbelievable. There is no amount of willing suspension of disbelief to make me swallow the final chapters. People love to see these plots because they are predictable and there is a feel-good quality to them. For example, i have to admit i couldn't wait till i found out what horrible ending Hatsumoto had, after being so cruel and despicable to poor Chiyo. But overall, except for the cultural aspect of the book, this is as bad as a cheap romance novel from the supermarket.
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26 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
this book was a total offence!!, February 25, 2003
By A Customer
Although there were geishas in Japan, there were only some who actually slept with men. This book is a total offence for Japanese women like me as some close minded ignorant western males still view Japanese women as being "geisha". Remember: 1) the author is a western MAN who depicts almost like European and Americans during imperialism. 2) Geisha whom he got many details from sued him for fabricating the truth and disgracing her name 3) He is not Japanese and didn't live in Japan long enough to know Japanese 4) the audience was not intended for Japanese but English speaking western who hardly know about Japanese
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A Dickensian story of how a culture shapes a life, December 26, 2005
The central fictional device of Arthur Golden's novel is that it presents itself as an "as told to" oral memoir of a former Japanese geisha. In a nice touch, the book has a forward by the fictional amanuensis, who describes his experience taking down the words of the protagonist.
As a page-turner, it works. The read is generally brisk throughout. Not so much because the reader is dying to know what comes next, but because the author has a graceful style that gently moves the reader along.
The book reads a little like Charles Dickens transplanted to Japan. All the Dickensian elements are here: a poor child loses the support of his/her natural family, and is thrust into nasty circumstances, a result of the peculiar institutions of the surrounding culture. In this case, it's a geisha house, not the orphanage that Dickens might write about. But the other Dickensian elements are all there: you meet mean, avaricious adults in the novel's early pages, and the poor child is required to scrape and to labor and to serve those around him/her in a way that no child should be required to do.
Also, as with Dickens, salvation comes in the form of unexpected kindnesses from randomly encountered adults in positions of authority.
The most notable aspect of the book is the care with which it details the life of the geisha: the appearance and significance of the clothing, the training in the seductive arts, the manners that determine both her reputation and that of her danna, and much else. I won't pretend that I can vouch for the accuracy of these details; but the author succeeds in giving them the credible feel of truth.
A few minor nits about the novel: one is that there are places where the "as told to oral history" conceit doesn't really work. The narration goes into minute details of feelings and sexual encounters that are fully in place in a typical first-person novel, but which are hard to imagine coming out of someone's mouth in this way. It sounds more written than spoken for much of the book. Which is fine, it doesn't make it any less pleasant to read, but it makes the basic story feel a little less believable.
The other aspect of the book that I found lacking was the hinging of so much on the protagonist's lifelong romantic attachment. The main character is motivated by a love interest throughout much of the novel, but it doesn't seem substantiated enough to perpetuate itself amid the novel's other more substantial events. Hence, the resolution of the love interest (I won't give away how it turns out) did not feel terribly satisfying. I found myself wishing that the author had found another central plot hook on which to hang his very impressive cultural detail.
If you're looking for a book that is a perfect literary whole, that you'll put down with a sigh afterwards and reflect to yourself about its perfection, you won't find it here. But if you're looking for something that piques your interest in a subculture of another society, this book succeeds quite well. |
On Jan-17-08 at 11:53:39 PST, seller added the following information:
Changes to Shipping Discount: We have changed our shipping discount rules. In order to offer what we anticipate will be more helpful to the majority of our customers, the following rules will apply, effective 1-17-08, to all of our orders. Thank-you! *When ordering more than one book, you will be charged the highest shipping cost plus an additional $1.00 for each additional book, on a single order. IF YOU WISH TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING DISCOUNTS, PLEASE DO NOT SEND PAYMENT/INSTANT PAY UNTIL AFTER I SEND YOU AN INVOICE WITH ANY SHIPPING ADJUSTMENTS. Thank-you! **If you purchase one or more books, there is no additional shipping charge to add one or more bookmarks to your order, when ordered in the same order. ***If you order more than one bookmark, but do not order any books, the shipping on the bookmark(s)ONLY(not books), will not exceed $1.75.
On Oct-22-08 at 13:35:11 PDT, seller added the following information:Please Note: Our shipping amounts in our listings, shipping discounts, & shipping promotions are ONLY for orders within the U.S.A. Thank-you for understanding!!
On Jan-26-09 at 11:23:59 PST, seller added the following information:International Buyers – Please Note:
Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer's responsibility. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding/buying. These charges are normally collected by the delivering freight (shipping) company or when you pick the item up – do not confuse them for additional shipping charges. We do not mark merchandise values below value or mark items as "gifts" - US and International government regulations prohibit such behavior.
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