Memoirs

I never really thought much of this book, some of my friends actually told me that it's a girlie book, usually meant for ladies to read and not for guys. Surprisingly, as fate would have it, I found the book sitting on the bookshelves as a traveller's book while staying at a hotel in Athens, Greece and took to reading it.

The book is written in a tell-tale and delicately-written style. It is very fluid and reads like a adult's bedtime novel. The book tells of the story of how the girl Chiyo, upon her mother's death bed, was sold into an okiya and later grew up to learn the ways of a geisha and became the most famous geisha Sayuri in Gion. Of course, she has an antagonist in the story in the form of Hatsumomo, who is a beautiful geisha, but recognised Chiyo's potential to surpass her in success and treated her cruelly.

I found this book to be childish at times, as it pitted one experienced geisha against a younger apprentice who was inexperienced, almost like a bully. Later in the novel when Sayuri became a famous and successful geisha, both (more on Hatsumomo's side) were trying to find ways to ruin each other's name constantly to compete for clients and money. It did become rather tiresome, but it was a nice cat fight to read to the end!

This novel is entirely fiction, but based on the real life accounts of the geisha, Mineko Iwasaki, who later sued the author Arthur Golden for breach of contract and defamation of character.

The best part of the book was in reference to a section where Mameha and Sayuri started to destroy Hatsumomo's reputation, and used a metaphor that meant that, if you start something, you have to finish it, especially when trying to destroy something or someone totally, completely and utterly!

On page 378, it reads:

"When you want to break a board, cracking it in the middle is only the first step. Success comes when you bounce up and down with all your weight until the board snaps in half."

I thought this metaphor summed up everything when you decide to be absolutely vindictive!

8 out of 10