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Title: A secret world
Review: Hundreds of people have reviewed this book, but I haven't yet, so here's my contribution. This is a book that ordinarily would not have read had I not had a little push from someone whose opinions I respect. "Memoirs" could have been fluffy and soap opera-ish, but it avoids most of those literary traps by eschewing romantic cliche and sticking to a fairly realistic, believable tone in which characters make hard choices with unexpected consequences and don't always get what they want. They grapple with making the best of their lot. In other words, a lot like Real Life."Memoirs" is written as an actual confessional, and if you don't read between the lines, you could almost believe that it was dictated to the author. It's an interesting look inside the world of the geisha and of life in early to mid-20th century Japan. The characters are involving and the plot is sprinkled with interesting plot twitsts. Some of them are a little pat at the end, but not terribly so.
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