Friday Feature is where we share books we love that have been out for several years. We don't want these treasures to get lost just because they aren't babies anymore!
Memoirs of a Geisha
Hardcover, Large Print, 434 pages
Published November 15th 2005 by Random House Large Print
In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.
We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. She is nine years old. In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance, learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires a special pillow. She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor and a venomous rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara. And Memoirs of a Geisha is a triumphant work - suspenseful, and utterly persuasive.
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| This book really made me think about the roles we all play- with family, jobs, friends, neighbors, etc. It isn't exactly the theme of the book, but it has got me thinking about how our lives all weave together. I thought the setting of the book was fun. The descriptions drew me right in and I felt like I was right in Gion. The loved the story, although the last few chapters have taken awhile to "settle" with me- I wanted something to be different. |
3/5 stars
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