Rach Wood
Written on Jul 12, 2021
In the small fishing village of Yoroido, in a shack by the sea on the coast of Japan, Chiyo and her sister Satsu live with their dying mother and ancient father. When a businessman comes to them with an offer to take the girls to the city, it doesn’t take much to convince the father that nearly any opportunity is better than staying there. Her father was told Satsu would be trained for “domestic service”, but she's fifteen and promptly placed in a brothel. Chiyo, who is nine, is deemed young enough to be trained to be a geisha. But almost everything goes wrong.
About the writing, I loved it: it's delightful poetic and absolutely immersive. Some people find it pretentious, but I understood that the author attempted to write as close as possible to the exquisite Japanese storytelling style. Each chapter was its own short story, which makes it easy to read, and Golden managed to make even the most mundane things sound curious or even exciting.
I was also invested in the characters. I noticed some reviewers take issue with Chiyo/Sayori, because most of her time she doesn't assert herself. But she takes the control of her life in the end, so I feel that, until then, she did what she needed to do in order to survive. Despite that, I would really like to read a real biography of a geisha someday.
