Other lives, other times (Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Date:	03/10/02 (218 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lots of detail

Disadvantages: not everyone's cup of tea.

I think one rason for reading is an interst in those who are different from us, and often the more different and exotic, the more interesting. Orriental cultures tend to have an aura of mystery about them, and none more so than the very secretive and strange world of the Geisha. While this book is a work of fiction (although at the outset it will try to convince you otherwise) it is well researched and does offer genuine insight into a culture and way of life very different to anything you might be used to.

Geishas are not, as you might have thought, simply high class prositutes - they are artists (musucians, singers, dancers) and their whole way of life could be viewed as a sort of art form in itself. They are professional mistresses, with a formal system allowing important men to buy their favour for periods of time. Theirs is a complex way of life, filled with rules of ettiquette alien to our own society.

Sayuri was born in a fishing village and aged 9, was sold off to be geisha. She was taken to Kyoto and lived in a geisha commune in the area called Gion - a geisha quarter. She learned to read and write, to sing, dance, play a lute like stringed instrument, perform tea ceremony and flirt with men. Rivalry with an established geisha and a desire to escape nearly deprived her of a career, but with help from the beautiful Mameha she worked herself out of debt and established herself as an important geisha. In the geisha profession, love is a luxury that few can afford as reputations must be carefully managed and 'patrons' must have much money. Sayuri does fall in love, and her adoration of a man she cannot have both sustains her and torments her.

The novel deals with love, friendship, rivalry, and intruige. It is set around the second world war - the end of an era for Japan, after which nothing could ever be the same again. Golden, the author deals with both the glamour and the more mundane aspects of geisha life, and I think his
attention to the less overtly interesting details is what really brings colour and life to the book. If details of other people's lives fascinate you, then you may well be intruiged by descriptions of how a geisha sleeps or makes tea, how a kimono is worn and what various hairstyles represent.

The book is not erotic, scandalous, or tabloidy, it is a frank and unsensational account of geisha life. It doesn't have a complex plot - but then life tends not to and it is simply the recounting or a woman's existence. I found it utterly rivetting, one of the best books I have read in a long time. I can however see that other readers less fascinated by the detail and with the 'what would it actually be like?' questions might find it tedious. It is a subtle book in many ways - the characters do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, emotins are closely guarded and you get the impression that most of them are living behind masks. Some might see this as a lack of characterisation, but given the way in which Sayuri talks about her isolation from those around her, the way in which no one actually knows her as a person, I think it is an intentional effect.

'Memoires of a Geisha' won't apeal to everyone, but hopefully this op will have given you some idea as to whether it might be your sort of thing.

Summary: