Sayuri relates her memoirs on a tape recorder, Jakob translates them to English, and then Golden…well, what does Golden do exactly? He transforms it into a narrative. In his note he speaks about a real life Geisha called Sayuri who relates her memoirs to him and seemingly on whom the novel is based. Was it real or not? The title ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ suggests so and when I opened the book the first thing I saw was a note from the Dutchman Jakob Haarhuis who translated the memoirs. Remember what I said before about how Golden makes his text seem as though it’s a real memoir, almost a nonfictional account of a real-life Geisha girl? In fact, the way in which my edition is constructed made it very confusing for me to work out what the text actually was. Is the way that Golden portrays the East as exotic and strange therefore an issue? I would argue that it is. In his widely influential work Orientalism, Edward Said explores how Westerners have imitated and depicted scenes from the East, viewing these through cliched analytical models as exotic. Is it a fetishism of the East? Most probably. Golden creates such a believable young voice that it’s important to remember that Memoirs of a Geisha is a book about the East written by a white man from the West. Now time for the caveat…and it’s quite a big, fat, problematic one.Īs much as I found this such a pleasurable reading experience, I think to look into the book on a deeper level would suggest some superficialities. One thing I found was how well the book flowed chapter sizes were perfect and the pace of the novel was such that you never got bored. Furthermore, the language style which Golden uses to paint his picture of this time and place is lovely. This comes about from the way that Golden gently interweaves little bits of information within the narrative which makes for a really engaging read.
Something about this book that set it apart from any other book that I’ve read before is the way with which it feels as though you’re reading fiction and non fiction at the same time. Her development throughout the Bildungsroman was touching and believable and although at times she made mistakes and could be incredibly melodramatic I ended up liking her throughout the whole book.
It was hard for me to not like Golden’s protagonist who starts off a young girl living in a small fishing village on the Japanese coast and through a series of unfortunate circumstances winds up flourishing in Tokyo as one of the most successful Geishas of her time. That for me was the true wonder of the book above all else: it really made you feel as though you were there inside the okiyas and tea houses of Tokyo, seeing and experiencing it all with your own eyes. I was transported out of O’Brien’s Ireland away from her annoying protagonists and dropped into the much different world of Chiyo’s Japan.īefore reading the novel I was vaguely aware of the Japanese geisha tradition but by the time I finished the book I knew so much more that I almost felt as though I’d been one myself.
When I finally got around to it after trudging my way through Edna O’Brien’s trilogy Our Country Girls, Golden didn’t let me down. Searching for mum on Christmas Day only to find her in bed with this book rather than prepping Brussels sprouts or watching Mary Poppins surrounded by Quality Street wrappers certainly left me with high hopes for the book. It was shortly after Christmas when mum thrust Arthur Golden’s 1998 novel Memoirs of a Geisha into my hands with promises that I’d be hooked just as she had been.