Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

This book was very detailed. I read it after watching the movie, and learned more in the first few pages than I did from the entire film. This is a story about the life of a geisha and the complexities and potential heartbreak and constrictions that come with that distinction. We watch as a girl is first sold to a geisha house by her parents, and slowly molded into a geisha. The girl falls in love with a man, a much older man, and we witness her pain of not being able to be with him because of what she is.

I thought that though the author was very descriptive, but I wasn't compelled to immerse myself in the book. Sometimes I felt the author's writing style to be uncomfortably detailed. I do enjoy detailed writing, and... I don't know what it was but at some points I just felt uncomfortable. Maybe that was the author doing his job well, as I know that if I lived in japan at that time and was in that situation I'd be pretty uncomfortable, but people can write about uncomfortable subjects and not make it uncomfortable to the reader, so I guess I didn't enjoy his writing style. In fact, if I remember correctly I put this down for a while somewhere in the middle of it and then convinced myself to finish it just to be able to put it on the shelf. Of course it didn't help that I knew the basic story line from watching the movie.

The story itself was fascinating though. It covers a very interesting subject and is very much worth the read.