My sister gave me this out of the blue and because I’d had no previous interest in Japan or geisha I thought I wouldn’t like it. But by George I was wrong.

I’d intended only to have a flick through and see what it was like. Three sentences in. Three paragraphs in. Three pages in… I didn’t stop reading until 3 days later and I’d finished it. I had actually had plans that day I’m sure, but they were stalled. The moment I opened that book, I sat down on the seat by the window and didn’t move for the rest of the day.

Brilliant book and the movie is also brilliant.

its a great book, but unfortunately not accurate. i cant explain very well, but there is information at this website: http://www.immortalgeisha.com/faq_memoirs_geisha.php

it was a great book, highly reccomend it. (the film is very good too, especially pumpkins character) (of course its always best to read the book first!)

There are some books that I can’t put down, those are the ones I really remember. We had gone to Chicago many years ago for a friend’s wedding and we almost missed the ceremony because I could not put this book down. I purposely did not see the movie because I knew it could not do justice…..

This is a beautiful book. It reads like a confession of a real geisha, complete with a translator’s note, but it’s all fictional.

It’s amazing that Arthur Golden was able to immerse himself in such a foreign culture and write in a voice so different than his own.

I read once in an interview with Golden that in the six years it took him to write the book, at one point, he’d actually painted his face with geisha makeup to literally get inside their skin.

So I find it tragic that, although he promised anonymity to one of the geisha he questioned, he printed her name in full in his acknowledgments.

He denies that he ever promised to keep her name a secret, but regardless, he understood so many things about the culture, he must have known what he was doing when he broke the code of silence.

It’s a good book, and he seems to be a good writer, but for me, the story will always be tainted by the real-life betrayal.

(You can see a Dateline interview with the geisha on YouTube here.)

Wow. That sums up this book. It’s an easy read, nicely written and tells an amazing story about a fictional geisha living in Gion during the depression and WWII.

It’s so worth reading. I’m almost sad that I’m finished and don’t have any more of it to read.

Memoirs of a Geisha is such a beautifully written novel. I found it nearly impossible to put down and read until my eyes felt as if they were about to burst out of their sockets.

It’s hard to believe it was written by a man, even harder still to believe that the character of Sayuri never really existed.