A beautifully written book, and very descriptive. All of the characters feel important to the story. I typically like to give my books away after I've read them, but this one is hard to give up. ( )

Heb dit boek vorig jaar gelezen.
Nooi beschreven, indrukwekkend.
Daarna hebben wij Japan bezocht en ook in Kyoto gewandeld.
Heel apart.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is so beautifully written, almost lyrical. Sometimes I forgot the author is a man and it really wasn't a woman writing this. The story is so believable that it wasn't until reading acknowledgments at the end that I was reminded it is a work of fiction. ( )

Memoirs of A Geisha is an extremely detailed book involving the life of Sayuri from the time she is a little girl until she becomes an elderly adult. Sayuri is sold to a family in the purpose of becoming a geisha. She loses all contact with her father, mother, and eventually her older sister. The emotional and physical obstacles Sayuri is forced to overcome are extremely realistic. The novel was very well written and after finishing it, I could not believe that this story wasn't non fiction. ( )

Memoirs of a Geisha takes you through the life of a young woman from childhood until she became one of the most popular Geishas. In this page-turner, you learn about a young womans struggle but also you have an opportunity to get an understanding of the original meaning of Geisha compared to what many people think it means today.

The movie did this book very little justice except to give you a picture of the places where the story took place. However, the author described them in such detail that your imagination would have these places almost perfect anyway.

This is the sort of book that draws you in from the very first page. As the title suggests, it is the story of Sayuri, sold by her parents at a young age to an okiya, a geisha house. Not only is it an engrossing story of suffering, longing, and triumph, it's also a fascinating look at the life of a geisha during the 1930s and 40s. The description of the places and characters was so vivid I could see it all. The whole concept behind a geisha - that having a mistress was not only acceptable but even expected of wealthy men - was somewhat jarring to my Western sensibilities, but the tale was told with such compassion and earnestness that it was easy to get drawn in to the different culture, and almost forget that it was written by a middle-aged American man and not an aged Japanese woman. There were things here and there that struck me as unrealistic - Nobu's interest in geisha despite finding them irritating, the pure malice of several characters - but by and large it was a great read. ( )

"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." Sayuri's voice is so authentic that this reads more like a biography than a work of fiction.

Sayuri tells of being sold after the death of her mother when she was nine years old. Despite the harsh treatment she recieves, a chance meeting with the Chairman, who shows her kindness, makes her determined to become a geisha. Mameha, a famous geisha, mentors Sayuri mainly to get revenge on the head geisha in Sayuri's okiya, Hatsumomo.

This brilliantly researched and beautifully written noveol is a must-read. ( )

Very engaging and captivating read. Not as entrancing after the war, and lost me a little towards the end. ( )

http://thebookwormslibrary.com/?p=142... ( )

One of the best books I have ever read and one of the few I read over and over. ( )

An interesting story, but probably overhyped. ( )

A superb story of a girl and then woman coming to terms with the shifts and losses of her life. Against the exotic backdrop of the Japanese geisha culture, the questions of fate and free will are examined. It was a riveting book, nearly impossible to put down. ( )

A young girl is sold by her father to a woman who will groom her to become a geisha in 20th century Japan. Beautifully written, Chiyo's story leaps from the page as she is taken from all she knows and thrust into this world of servitude where she must meet approval and face harsh realities. I found it hard to let go of this book. I was drawn in by the culture of these Japanese women, the rigorous training and preparation they must endure to become beautiful entertainers. ( )

My first 1,001 book in quite awhile. What started out slow and unsure, slowly developed into a beautiful tale of survival and love.

The story brings the life of a young girl, sold from her family into servitude, the potential to become a geisha and have a somewhat of a life, not living in poverty. While reading it's almost hard not to imagine that the book is true, the words are true, and everything about the lives of the characters truly happened.

I have had this book on my shelf since high school, many years, and anticipated reading it, which now more than ever I am glad I did. I look forward to watching the movie to see differences or even to more fully understand the story and the emotion behind forbidden love.

Highly recommend. A new classic.

Ik heb ook het boek gelezen, het is een prachtig boek. Het was een heel mooi boek, het wordt tot aan de kleiste details verteld. Het is een indrukwekkend boek, als je er eenmaal aanbegint kun je niet meer ophouden. Ook heb ik daarna het film gezien, het film was ook mooi. Het film was te kort vond ik, omdat het boek zo gedetailleerd was. Daarom vond ik het film simpel, ik raad het aan om eerst het boek te lezen. Het is zeker waard!!

The thing that particularly impressed me about this book was how the author managed to capture the innocence of the first person narrating character - and I really felt all the bashfulness and shame of a young girl, whose life has been taken away in an unexpected turn. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' I found to be a truly captivating story, a useful introduction to what it meant to be a geisha in early 20th century Japan, and a romance, tragedy and biographical insight all rolled into one. I didn't rate this story as highly as I perhaps should have, because the ending wasn't as I hoped it would be, and yet I understand that in the era in which this book was based, women had very little freedom. My infuriation towards the lives which these women chose to continue living is understandable when we consider the freedom that women are granted in modern day society, particularly in the west. Nevertheless, Golden writes exceptionally and illustrates the tragic and startling reality that there just weren't a lot of choices available to these women. ( )

Mary Fried
Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha is such a fantastic book. I was engrossed completely in this novel just after reading the first page. The point of view in this memoir is not omniscient but in the first person. Sayuri, the main character telling the story, narrates her life beginning with when she was nine years old and the subsequent years that follow. Yoroido was the small town that Sayuri lived in as a little girl. She lived in a tiny, wooden house off the cliffs by the ocean where it was always windy. Sayuri called this house the “tipsy house” because it was also lopsided. Her father was a fisherman and all her life she lived off of the barest necessities.
In the small town of Yoroido, fishing was the only way of getting income and the village had a modest temple and school. Sayuri’s mother became extremely ill and the family didn’t have enough money to give her proper medical attention. When she was nine, she and her sister, Satsu, were sold by their father to become servants. This was their father’s vain attempt to cure their mother. After being sold, they moved to an industrious city called Gion. Compared to Gion, Yoroido was deficient in infrastructure, size and immaculacy. Gion is the icon of Japan and the home of many geishas. Sayuri caught her first glimpse of automobiles and other motor vehicles in Gion. After WWII however, Gion changed from a hotspot for entertainment to vast factories with little or no geisha. Upon arriving in Gion, Sayuri was separated from her sister and sent to an okiya, a household where geishas reside, and was forced to make a transition from her once happy life to a servant.
The daily life of a geisha seems simple, but it is not an easy road. Many geisha earn money by impressing men with their wit, talent, high spirits and vivaciousness. Despite their harmonic social appearance, the feelings of intense ruthlessness between a geisha and her competition are strong. A geisha’s life is very complicated. In every okiya, there is a head geisha. Hatsumomo, a bright, beautiful young woman was the honorary geisha of the household where Sayuri lived. Hatsumomo’s looks were quite deceiving because she was incredibly diabolical and scheming. She lashed out at Sayuri numerous times. Hatsumomo launched a reign of terror for many years in the okiya because as the head geisha she had a huge amount of power. She was intent on making Sayuri’s life miserable. Many prominent geisha, such as Hatsummomo, look after a younger apprentice geisha, or geisha in training, who are often referred to as little sisters. An older geisha would take her little sister on outings to famous theaters and teahouses to make her popular. Hatsummomos little sister was a clumsy, former servant girl nicknamed Pumpkin for the way she chronically stuck her tongue out when completing strenuous tasks. Pumpkin and Sayuri had a wonderful friendship until the battle to be the next geisha of their okiya damaged their relationship forever. Pumpkin was very naïve throughout the novel and becomes a traitor to Sayuri in the end of the book. Mameha, the preeminent geisha during that time took Sayuri in as a little sister and taught her proper etiquette, dance and how to succeed as a geisha. Both Sayuri and Mameha were eventually able to overthrow Hatsumomo and drive her out of Gion.
The Chairman is a very complicated and mysterious man. He is the hero of the story because he saw the true potential in Sayuri and asked Mameha to take her in as a little sister. The Chairman and Sayuri fall in love by the end of the memoir . Nobuku, second in command to the Chairman, also loved Sayuri very much. Hatsumomo would call him Mr. Lizard because half of his entire body was burned in a terrible accident. Nobuku had a strong temperament and was happy that Sayuri could see past his physical appearance. Sayuri is the sweet, mellow voice of the memoir that is full of hope and love. She was able to get past various grievances in her life and find true happiness with her one love, the Chairman. I deplore how some girls where sold into okiyas against their own will. Also, geishas were never able to settle down and have a husband, let alone a true love. I love that Sayuri and the Chairman felt contentment and bliss with each other. During that time, it was difficult to find peace, clarity and true love. A major theme in this memoir is the change in upholding traditional values in Japan during the early twentieth century for a young woman. Another theme occurring in this novel was being able to overcome adversity with hope. Both of these themes exemplify Sayuri’s life because when she was traded off to the okiya as a young girl the essence and customs of her life changed perpetually. Also, despite Hatsumomos hatred, how Pumpkin backstabbed her and the immeasurable amount of effort put into becoming a geisha that Mameha enforced, Sayuri prevailed by always having a vestige of hope throughout Memoirs of a Geisha. ( )

Prachtig verhaal over de ontwikkeling van een jong meisje dat opgeleid wordt tot geisha in Kyoto. (NHDH) ( )

As usual, it would seem I'm in a minority with this romantic tale of Chiyo-become-Sayuri, the peasant girl who became geisha.

Set amid the backdrop of Depression Era and World War II Japan, the story takes you from Chiyo's fishing village, peasant beginnings to the opulent, harsh and at the same time frivolous world of Gion, where Chiyo transforms into a highly trained geisha known as Sayuri, and from there into the bitterly harsh realities of post-war Japan where she eeks out an existence as a dyer for a former, famed kimono maker.

While I wanted to become enveloped in this artful, contrived world of the geisha, as I was in the film, I found myself distanced. Golden's insights of things Japanese is masterful, but I feel his insights of things feminine lacking. This became uncomfortably clear during the section dealing with Sayuri's virginity sale, and how she reacts to her successful buyer. For a young girl without sexual knowledge she is remarkably cool, to the point the entire section becomes dispassionate and a non-event.

Even prior to that when the infamous Baron wishes to see what he's bidding for and secrets her away to undress her, the terror of the moment is utterly lost.

Indeed the only terror Sayuri feels, and even then it's not sexual, is much later on, after she's become a very well-known and experienced geisha, and attempts to thwart a would-be patron's bid for her. Her shame, and her terror, is not for the act of sex, but rather that the Chairman, her long-time love, discovers her rather than her intended victim.

Perhaps this distancing is a cultural difference. Perhaps not. As such I was left feeling the author's credibility lacked.

There are other instances of emotional distance. While Chiyo, and then Sayuri, mourns the loss of her mother, it is lost on the reader because there has been little by way of relationship development, and so Chiyo's mourning becomes nothing more than whining. Again, this occurs in the relationship between Chiyo and her father. She professes to miss him, and yet he has never treated her with kindness. And the relationship between Chiyo and her sister, and her need to find her sister, looses emotional impact because there has been little in the way of development of this relationship. We are expected, as a reader, to simply accept there is a bond. It doesn't work. And so not only Chiyo/Sayuri, but the entire tone of the novel, comes off as cool, without passion, and certainly it would appear from the words Golden chooses he very much wishes the reader to feel passionately.

As it is, I would rate Memoirs of a Geisha as light summer reading, and entirely forgettable. ( )

I loved this book when it first came out. The writing is splendid - much better than the movie. It will alsways be a favourite. ( )

LOVED this book - this is author who, in this book, transports you to another place, another time. The characters are fascinating, real, easy to like. (or dislike, depending upon which character it is) This is a book I kept, although I usually give them away, as I will read it again. ( )

Starts out with a young woman being sold by her father to this life, and how she turns into a leading geisha.

Excellent book....allows you to experience how the geishas live and what their daily lives were like. You live the character's daily life and experience the feelings all these women have for each other including the tension and some tenderness.

I think more so it was a wonderful love story.

The movie was good, but the book was better. ( )

Absolutely loved this book. The culture is fascinating. The book reminded me of a book I read many years ago (Fifth Chinese Daughter). ( )

Set in 1930s and 40s Japan, Memoirs of a Geisha reads as a memoir of one of the great geishas of that era. In reality, it is a work of fiction - written by a man no less - that takes an in-depth look into a world that most of us have little connection to and even less understanding of. For starters, Arthur Golden is quick to point out that the western tendency to equate 'gesha' with 'prostitute' is inaccurate. In fact, a gesha is more analogis to a 'trophy wife' than a protitute. Golden's story follows the life of a fishing village orphan - Sayuri - who is sold by her father into one of the geisha houses in the Gion district of Kyoto. Nieve to the world she has been sold into, we become educated in the intrecasies of geisha life right along with her. Golden's writing is powerful. You feel the emotions that Sayuri does, the uncertaincy of what will happen next, and the joy in her victories. This ends up being one of those books that proves how amazing a book can be when it transports you so skillfully into a world that you would never be able to experience on your own. Golden's was able to research this world as nobody else has ever been able to. This book is proof that he did not waste the effort.

There are a couple of small issues with Memoirs of a Geisha. While the first half of the book provides wonderful detail and an engaging plot that won't allow you to put the book down, the second half doesn't give the reader quite enough. The climax of the story doesn't provide a grand finale as much as the story just seems to fade-to-black. That said, the book reads very well. It will immerse you into completely foriegn land, but still guide you so that you don't become lost. A unique read for certain, I think it is a story everyone should give a try.

4.0 stars: Great book, you should not be disappointed

Find more of my reviews at www.chadintheazdesert.blogspot.com ( )

I picked up this book after I saw the movie, and love it so much more! Beautifully written, I got cought up in Sayuri's emotional life. She is sold into a geisha house by her father after her mother deaths. It's here at Nitta okiya where she tells of her treatment from Granny and Mother and Hatsumomo. After she meets the Chairman, she is determained to become a geisha. Under mameha's teachings she becomes a leading geisha. ( )