This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary story of a geisha -summoning up a quarter century from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan's dramatic history, and opening a window into a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Her memoirs conjure up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the land's most powerful men.
My Rating: 5/5
Before reading this book I knew very little about Geisha's and Japanese culture. This has now changed as this book is very in depth with both of those aspects.
I definitely liked the first half of the book more than the second half. The childhood part was more interesting along with all the politics involved in a Geisha house.
It is amazing though of what a vivid portrayal the author creates not only with the Japanese setting but the characters as well. It really felt like you were in the characters heads sometimes.
Given that this is mostly a young adult blog, I wouldn't recommend this book to younger readers as it does have some detailed adult themes.
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