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.