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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
...(more) 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.(less)
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I had first watched the movie Memoirs of a Geisha before reading the book. I didn’t know the movie was based on Arthur Golden’s book by the same name. As soon as I finished watching the movie, I was so enthralled by it that I had to read the book. It’s a good thing I did, because the book is much better than the movie. It has much more details and after watching the movie again, I realized that the movie skipped out on a lot of important details in the book, especially the beginning.
I love the book Memoirs of a Geisha! I love the way it was written and I loved all the characters in the book, especially Hatsumomo and Mameha. A rundown of all the main characters in the book that I think are important:
*Sayuri (real name:Chiyo), main character. She had to succeed through life, with a few obstacles on the way, without knowing the kind of place she had wound up in. She becomes a geisha because she thinks that is the only way to get closer to the Chairman.
*Hatsumomo is Sayuri