What I Liked
This novel was strikingly beautiful. I was fascinated by the glimpses of a culture I know almost nothing about (although I realize that this was not written by a Japanese person, I still learned more than what I knew before). I was deeply struck and pained by the idea of women living glamorous lives of celebrities while being essentially owned as slaves. Memoirs of a Geisha is one of the most compelling novels I have read in a long time.

What I Didn't Like
There are two things about this book that I did not like.

The introduction bothers me. It is written as if by a pretend translator to provide a false sense of authenticity to Sayuri's story. In fact, the book is historical fiction about a Japanese woman written by an American man, Arthur Golden. Writing is to go beyond oneself, so I do not mind Arthur Golden's being the author. But the efforts to make sure it seemed as if Memoirs of a Geisha was a real memoir bothered me. Every reader needs to take this book for what it is: historical fiction, and realize that it will take more than a Western novel to truly understand another culture.

The other thing I did not like about this book was the ending.

Spoiler

Glamorizing Sayuri's story into a similar parallel to Cinderella... but her "rescue" is that she becomes a mistress to a much-older man who is already married to a wife? The extent of how much of Sayuri's identity and purpose revolve around this old, married man drove me insane.