An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as 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. 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, always elusive, 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; 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. 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 nuances 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.
A dazzling literary achievement of empathy and grace by an extraordinary new writer.
In the historical fiction novel Memoirs of a Geisha, the debut of Arthur Golden, the narrator is one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. She's fictional of course, but her confessions about her life, before, during and after World War II, are presented with (almost) seamless authenticity. We can't say the reality depicted it's thoroughly accurate, since the author is not Japanese, but it shows that Golden, an american, has done his research and is well-educated on his subjects.
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.
