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  • I could not put this book down, I mean almost literally I read strait through it! I have no idea why I let this book sit on my shelf for so long but now I am just grateful that I read it. Beautifully written, the characters are so well crafted that I loved even the ones I hated. It was one of those ... Continue

    I could not put this book down, I mean almost literally I read strait through it! I have no idea why I let this book sit on my shelf for so long but now I am just grateful that I read it. Beautifully written, the characters are so well crafted that I loved even the ones I hated. It was one of those books that had me wishing it was longer so the story wouldn't have to end.

    

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• ― Icedream said on Feb 22, 2008 about the Mass Market Paperback edition| 1 feedback| 1 feedback

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  • better than the movie (aren't they always :)

  • At first I thought this was a true story and I have to admit, when I found out it was fiction I was a bit disappointed. Nevertheless, I love this book because it's unlike any other book I've ever read. I learned about Japanese culture and I gained a respect for geisha.

    

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• ― Ca1iforniasquirt said on Sep 20, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Sad and dark story. By the time I finished the book I had come to the conclusion that Geishas are just exploited girls..call whatever you want but in the end it is just pitiful how the whole system work to exploit women..

    

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• ― Annam_Mathews said on Jul 5, 2006 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.

We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. She is nine years old. In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance, learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires a special pillow. She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor and a venomous rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara. And Memoirs of a Geisha is a triumphant work - suspenseful, and utterly persuasive.

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