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The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumour spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."
Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.
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Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780099771517
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Seductive, evocative, exquisite - intimate memoirs spanning half a century of Japanese history, revealing a closed world.'An epic tale and a brutal evocation of a disappearing world' The TimesA young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Many years later she tells her story from a hotel in New York, opening a window into an extraordinary half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation and summoning up a quarter of a century of Japan's dramatic history.'Intimate and brutal, written in cool, lucid prose it is a novel whose psychological empathy and historical truths are outstanding' Mail on Sunday 'An epic tale and a brutal evocation of a disappearing world' The TimesA young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099771517
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 4211187
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 448 pages. 7.80x5.12x1.10 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0099771519
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. In shrink wrap. Seller Inventory # 67-00509
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780099771517-GDR
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Brand New Copy. Seller Inventory # BBB_new0099771519
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. 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. Seller Inventory # B9780099771517