|
Loading... Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)by Arthur Golden
  
» 36 more Carole's List (1) BBC Big Read (102) Female Protagonist (56) Top Five Books of 2013 (508) 20th Century Literature (221) Japanese Literature (49) Five star books (106) A Novel Cure (97) A Girl's Life (20) Books Read in 2013 (240) Asia (42) Reading Globally (14) Books Read in 2010 (80) BBC Big Read (42) Read These Too (10) First Novels (54) Unread books (492) BBC Top Books (20) No current Talk conversations about this book. it was slow in the beginning but good story (  ) sandra.pinkerton83 | Apr 16, 2019 |  Loved the story (  ) bm2ng | Apr 9, 2019 | A girl is sold into slavery. 1/4 (Bad). I stopped after 100 pages, bored. The prose style is completely void of personality. It's written by an academic who has very obviously studied The Novel, knows how to communicate clearly in writing, but is not a writer. In 100 pages, there were maybe three sentences that had any spark of life in them. (  ) comfypants | Mar 15, 2019 | Why I stopped reading: I couldn't take more than forty pages of this Mary Sue. The voice is overwritten and forced, especially the similes. I skimmed ahead a bit and the narrator's specialness seems unabating, so I'm done. 1  AmandaGStevens | Mar 2, 2019 | Rereading ( ) yhgail | Feb 20, 2019 |
 Golden fills the book with vivid images and subtle descriptions of the nuances of Japanese culture, and is absolutely brilliant in his description of the customs and rituals of the geisha. Through the meticulous detail the reader can fully understand the politics, rivalries, and traditions of the Japan geisha society.  Mr. Golden gives us not only a richly sympathetic portrait of a woman, but also a finely observed picture of an anomalous and largely vanished world. He has made an impressive and unusual debut.  Haarhuis's foreword and Golden's epilogue, the one appropriating the guise of a novel and the other taking it off, suggest an author who is of two minds when it comes to his work. It is not surprising, then, if his readers share this uncertainty. The decision to write an autobiographically styled novel rather than a nonfiction portrait is most obviously justified in terms of empathy, of allowing greater freedom to explore the geisha's inner life. Unfortunately, Sayuri's personality seems so familiar it is almost generic; she is not so much an individual as a faultless arrangement of feminine virtues.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0679781587, Paperback)The first thing you notice about the audio version of Memoirs of a Geisha is that Arthur Golden's 428-page novel has been reduced to a scant two cassettes. But dismay quickly gives way to mounting pleasure as Elaina Erika Davis (Contact, As the World Turns) begins her delicate rendering of geisha culture in the years before World War II. Davis reads the abbreviated story of Sayuri with an authentic-sounding Japanese accent--one mixed with a magical combination of Asian reserve and theatrical energy. As Sayuri ages from a 9-year-old peasant girl to a popular geisha in her late 20s, Davis directs her voice gently away from curious youth to a tone that reflects Sayuri's uphill life.From start to finish, the listener is absorbed in the elegant spirit of Davis's performance, eager to hear the next chapter of Sayuri's transformation into one of the most famous geishas of the century. How unfortunate, then, to learn that book readers not only get the basic story, but a fascinating look at the intricate rules and rituals of geisha culture. Here, for example, is one of the many revelations omitted from the cassette: "Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs.... In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial.... When a man sits beside her, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath." We're also denied several subplots--the aborted friendship between Sayuri and a geisha named Pumpkin, for example, or much of the story involving the man Sayuri is secretly in love with. But what remains is as precious as a traditional Japanese kimono--at once artistic, suggestive, and moving. --Ann Senechal (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:16:27 -0400) Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s. |
 Google Books — Loading...Popular coversRatingAverage: (4.01)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
18
Wikipedia in English (1)
9