Książka specyficzna, wciągająca w świat tak dla nas, dzisiejszych kobiet, odległy. Po raz kolejny przekonałam się ze światem rządzą układy i układziki, koneksje i poplecznictwo. Warto przeczytać by poczuć inną kulturę!

Kraj kwitnącej wiśni cieszy się od lat ogromną popularnością. I choć kultura japońska fascynuje ludzi na całym świecie, o gejszach wciąż mówi się rzadko. Niewiele osób wie, czym różni się gejsza od prostytutki. Za sprawą książki Arthura Goldena dowiedzieć się o gejszach można naprawdę sporo. Na przykład tego, że każda z tych pięknych kobiet za fasadą karminowego uśmiechu na białej twarzy może skrywać znacznie więcej, niż ktokolwiek śmiałby sobie wyobrażać.

Czyta się bardzo szybko. Na pewno przyczynia się do tego fakt, że autor błyskawicznie oczarowuje czytelnika. Roztacza piękne opisy zjawiskowych i tajemniczych gejsz, przypominających dzieła sztuki kimon i uroków życia w dzielnicy rozrywkowej. Opisy bardziej plastyczne niż wiele zdjęć, jakie można znaleźć w sieci.

Naprawdę, ale to naprawdę polecam.

Reading other reviews I had expected more of this book but it just didn't grab me in the same way as some of the author's earlier works. I found the face too slow and plot development somewhat predictable.

It seems like most everyone loved this except me. I did like the first hundred or so pages, and it was a fairly quick read. My first gripe is a bit of a personal pet peeve I hate endless clothes descriptions and this book has so much. Yea I don't need to knew what you are wearing every moment. This book has a lot of women on women hate. It just got really pretty after awhile. Also as a romance this book failed completely. All of the men were at least mid thirties and most of the women were teens to early twenties. The men were also married and at some various points paying the women for sex so no it wasn't very romantic to me. The main romantic plot to me wasn't very believable to me. I hated the Mary Sue narration and just overall didn't like it. Recommend for people that are into sleazy men and catty women

I have no idea how to begin this review, nothing I can possibly say will adequately measure how beautifully enchanting the writing was. Without looking at the context and any possible controversies surrounding how this book came to be, I thought this novel was a mesmerizing read from start to finish.

Our main character Chiyo had such a fascinating life journey, from becoming an orphan to her relative-to-the-story end in New York City, I didn’t realize but slowly I found myself disliking her choices throughout the book. After a while, her decisions made me like her less and less, especially with some choices that may have seemed manipulative and twisted had it been from a different voice. One of the first decisions she made which I instantly disliked was her ability to give in to the life of a geisha so easily as she did.

“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”

“If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.”

I think one of the great aspects of this book was definitely the hardship endured during the War, and how its effects trickle down to even the smallest of villages to large towns like Gion.

While there weren’t many twists and turns in this novel, there was certainly a sense of uncertainty where our main character will end up, or what will happen to her. At most parts, the readers can always tell what is to happen but it’s like a slow train wreck where you’re helpless to do anything but to look.

Chiyo’s relationship with the Chairman, the main love interest of a kind, was slow simmering in its entirety where the ending felt slightly unrealistic. I wholeheartedly was engrossed in Chiyo’s relations with others in her okiya, especially with the elders and Hatsumomo and Pumpkin. While we as readers can see from Chiyo’s POV, as an outsider she really is no different from other geishas imo regarding how she manipulates for her desires whenever she wants.

Obviously I can’t disregard the discrepancies between the way Japan is portrayed, the fact that the author of this story is someone non-Japanese writing as a memoir, or how it was slightly inspired from a true Geisha who did not want so much involvement released publicly through this book and said author disregarded her wishes.