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Title: Overrated!
Review: Don't believe the hype! The effort that went into creating this book is admirable, but this is a shallow exploration of a geisha's profession and of a woman's mind. It's crammed with details, but they don't add up to much. After finishing the book, I felt I had learned very little about the geisha arts. What was Sayuri learning in that school all day long? The narrative contains an abundance of cheesy metaphors and at times reads like bad haiku. The central romance of the book is implausible -- Nobu is a much more compelling love interest than the two-dimensional Chairman, and any woman as "clever" as Sayuri supposedly is would recognize this. To see a male novelist writing from a woman's point of view successfully, try She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb -- not Memoirs of a Geisha.
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