Media Reviews

John Burnham Schwartz - The New Yorker
There is a particular pleasure to be found in reading a novel that is sui generis and yet is imbued with subtle shadings of its literary predecessors this is a high-wire act. To protect himself against falling, the author has brought to his task a prodigious trove of research ... and an uncanny degree of empathy for ... a woman usually regarded in the West as either caricature or museum piece.... Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance

John Burnham Schwartz - The New Yorker
There is a particular pleasure to be found in reading a novel that is sui generis and yet is imbued with subtle shadings of its literary predecessors this is a high-wire act. To protect himself against falling, the author has brought to his task a prodigious trove of research ... and an uncanny degree of empathy for ... a woman usually regarded in the West as either caricature or museum piece.... Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance

 Geraldine Brooks
A haunting tale of a hidden world that could hold an audience spellbound through many an evening in a lantern-lit teahouse.

 Elinor Lipman
Memoirs of a Geisha is a masterpiece. Every detail on this canvas is fascinating, even arresting, while at the same time the bigger portrait--the story, the truth told, a life revealed--is spellbinding.

 Geraldine Brooks
A haunting tale of a hidden world that could hold an audience spellbound through many an evening in a lantern-lit teahouse.

 Julia Blackburn
Sayuri tells her story with such gentle courtesy and determination that you are quickly brought under the spell of her character. She takes you by the hand and leads you into a world that is both formal and intimate, a world that I had only before glimpsed in the fleeting and beautiful images of traditional Japanese ink painting...Memoirs of a Geisha is a wonderful achievement.

 Ann Beattie
Wonderful, involving, intelligent, fascinating, and almost Dickensian in the way the characters inhabit the landscape, and the landscape permeates the characters. It's a unique, beautifully written book.

 Pico Iyer
I still can't quite believe that an American male can so seamlessly enter the soul of a Japanese woman, and catch her world, its textures, its hopes, and its sinuous patter with such perfection. Memoirs of a Geisha evokes all the delicate steel of Kyoto's geisha culture with such uncanny fidelity that, after you've finished, you feel as if you've entered not just another world, but an extraordinary and foreign heart.

Reader Reviews

Marg Riel
masterpiece
Memoirs of A Geisha can be described as one word; "masterpiece." Each detail creates an unexplainable imagine and you can envision yourself in the story. The author tells her story willingly and purposely allows the reader to put ...   Read More

Linda Gear
Memoirs of a Geisha
I love this book. It will always be near me. I have read it numerous times and never tire of it. I read other books, but this one is always nearby.(I also have the movie). I love the dialogue of Sayuri her raw story of being cruelly taken from ...   Read More

sayuri
moag
Nice! Captivating!

Gene R. Hyde
Memoirs of a Geisha
I thought it was an elegantly written book, not without controversy, about a culture I’m truly fascinated with. I could vividly see myself in a Japanese Tea House, and all of the exquisite richness of simplicity, obsessive love, and pain, while ...   Read More

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• Historical Fiction
  
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• East Asia (except China)
  
• 20th Century (multiple decades)
  
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