Memoirs of a Fascinating Life (Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden)

Member Name: sandrabarber

Product:	Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Date:	28/07/03 (190 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautifully written, emotive, educational

Disadvantages: that trick

?Memoirs of a Geisha? by Arthur Golden was one of the most talked-about books of the 1990s. It sat at the top of the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic for an age. You couldn?t get on a bus, train or tube without seeing someone lost in its pages. I got around to reading it myself a couple of weeks ago, finally finding out for myself just what all the fuss was about.


The Plot

Chiyo, a beautiful Japanese child, lives with her sister, Satsu, her ageing father and her dying mother in a tiny fishing village. When her mother reaches critical stage, Chiyo and Satsu are sold and taken to Gion, Kyoto?s world famous entertainment district.

Once in Gion the two girls are separated. Chiyo is taken to an okiya, or geisha house, and her sister to a brothel where she is forced into prostitution.

Despite Chiyo appearing to have got the better of the two deals, her life is utterly miserable. Afraid and lonely, she is cruelly abused by the okiya?s head geisha, Hatsumomo, and treated no better by the okiya owners, ?Mother?, ?Auntie? and ?Grandmother?.

Chiyo is rebellious, which makes her situation even worse. Because of her unruliness, she loses her chance to train to be a geisha herself and is condemned to a life of drudgery as an okiya servant.

Only the kind words of one man she meets in the street keep her going through her darkest hours. She calls him ?The Chairman? and daydreams of him constantly, imagining him coming into her life and changing it forever.

Her life is eventually changed when she is taken under the wing of the region?s most successful geisha who persuades Mother, Auntie and Grandmother to let her train Chiyo herself.

The novel then follows Chiyo?s life as the newly-named Sayuri, a sought-after geisha who appears to have great success but remains inside a sad, abandoned child dreaming of one thing a geisha rarely has ? true love.


The Writing

Okiya
life is painstakingly recreated in this novel, from descriptions of complex kimono to the hierarchical existence of geisha life and the intricate, highly formal geisha arts. Minor conversations are recounted verbatim, and scenery is depicted with precision. Because of this, Memoirs as a Geisha could not be described as a thrilling read.

Where some have criticised this aspect of the book, I personally loved it. Such attention to detail swept me into the world of Gion and held me there enthralled. Every time I put the book down I felt jolted, as if I had truly been in Japan with Sayuri.

Having said that, however, we do not get to know Sayuri as completely as we do her surroundings. We know of her loneliness and desire for love, but we learn little of her feelings as she pursues a career she did not choose, and one that involves selling her virginity, her attention and her body to the highest bidders.

Again, though, this is not necessarily a criticism, but rather this technique reflects the repression, secrecy and sense of duty that existed in Japanese society (and particularly geisha society ) at the time.

By the novel?s end I felt a great deal of affection for Sayuri, and admiration for the many humiliations and denials she had suffered whilst at the same time attempting to do what she felt was right.

My one problem with the way in which Memoirs of a Geisha is written is that it more or less tricks the reader into thinking they are reading the memoirs of an actual geisha as dictated to the author, and then at the end declares that the book is entirely a work of fiction. Eagle-eyed readers will not fall for this, but I and everyone else I know who read it, did fall for it and was heartily disappointed to discover the truth.


The Author

I must say hats off to Arthur Golden on several counts.

Writing as a woman is a difficult process for any man and is fraught with potential criticisms fr
om the PC lobby. Golden manages it brilliantly. Never throughout the book was I reminded that the generator of this tale was male.

Writing from within a culture that is not ones own is equally problematic, and again it seems to me that Golden pulls it off wonderfully. His love for and fascination with Japan shines through, and his research was clearly long and in-depth.

Thirdly, the prose itself deserves great praise for its beauty, its elegant sentence structure and precise use of words. Rarely these days do I pick up a book and encounter such a love of language.


Overall

I loved Memoirs of a Geisha and could hardly put it down. It swept me up and carried me away to another place and another time, and I adored every second of it. At 420 pages, it is a long book, but as far as I was concerned it could have gone on for another 420 pages and I still would have been transfixed.

If you?re after a racy, pacy roller coaster of a story, you won?t get it with this. But if you want to delve deeply into another culture and acquaint yourselves with its most minute details, whilst at the same time engage with a heroine who is both tragic and likeable, then this novel is one you won?t forget for a long, long time.


ISBN 0099771519
Published by Vintage, June 1998
£5.99 at amazon.co.uk

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