Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Page-turner!!!
Review: I LOVED everything about this book. The characters are interesting and well developed and the plot is riveting. It's amazing that the book was written by an American male. If I didn't know it was fiction and that the writer was indeed a male, I would have thought it a work of non-fiction written by an actual geisha. This is a must read for all sexes and ages. It has something for everyone: romance, drama, suspense, a loveable main character (Sayuri) and a wonderful villain (Hatsumomo). I learned so much about a world that held very little, if any, interest to me. I only bought the book because it received such high praise. It will definitely become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, educational, and a page turner!
Review: I bought this book only 3 days ago, and read it over two evenings. Every time I came to the end of a chapter, I just couldn't wait to find out what happened next, and continued reading. The story itself is amazing - the reader feels as if they are finding out the most intimate details of the character's thoughts, but so much is still hidden - just like the "act" the real Geisha played for their clients. I believed that I was reading about a real person's life, and though the author's first person account made Chiyo sound as if she always said something beautiful, it only added to the mysterious quality of the geisha. I loved every second of this book, and only hope I don't have to wait another ten years for him to research his next!
Rating: 
Summary: Like the Geisha, It's All Illusion
Review: With its subtle packaging and effusive critical cover blurbs, "Memoirs" presents itself as a lyrical, literary fable. But like its heroine, it is just a construct of pretty illusion, made only to entertain, never enlighten or challenge. The characters struck me as uninvolving and as thin as rice-paper, the so-called "elegant" writing as serviceable and sometimes distressingly cliched. The plot kept me turning the pages but "suspenseful?" Sayuri's tale was as predictable as a mediocre romance. In fact, if this novel had been packaged as a romance, I might not feel so betrayed by its lack of emotional resonance and complexity. As for Golden's attempt to capture the female voice, well, he's no Flaubert. He's not even Michener. (See Mariko in "Shogun" for a more three-dimensional heroine). Maybe like "Bridges of Madison County," this will make a better movie than book.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Read!
Review: For someone who has been interested in Japanese culture for a long time, Memoirs certainly sheds a new light on a highly misunderstood profession. The writing is poetic, striking me as something almost Eastern in its style and wholly engrossing.
Rating:
Summary: a wonderful journey
Review: I found Memoirs of a Geisha to be one of the most captivating books I have read in a long time. I was able to feel so connected to the main character yet I know nothing of japanese culture, let alone geishas. I not only found this book to be a page turner, I saved the last 50 pages for a week because I did not want it to end. Probably the most disappointing aspect of this book was that it was not a true story.
Rating: 
Summary: Over-all entertaining reading - a page turner.
Review: I truly enjoyed reading every word of this novel. I was surprised by the complexity of the geisha culture and awe-struck by their code of conduct. My only disappointment was in the hurried final third of this woman's life story. I thought that this memoir should have elaborated more at the end, providing a more personal, complete wrap-up to her life. All-in-all, this book gives us a fascinating, easy-to-read glimpse into a totally foreign (to me, at least) world.
Rating: 
Summary: The book is very disappointing
Review: I thought the the plot was really clunky, the writing mechanical, the characters poorly developed, and most of all I resented the fact that the men portrayed in this work were, with one exception, represented as twisted, horrible creatures. Mr. Tanaka, Dr Crab(!), Nobu, Minister, the General.....all written up as cretanoid mutants. And the author is even a man! Not only a man, but an American who is interested in Japanese history primarily and did some amount of study in Japan. He no doubt thought himself qualified after his residence there to publish the "great" Japanese novel. I would imagine the Japanese literary community is appalled at this book. Perhaps some of the material about the geisha class themselves, their training and culture was redeeming, I don't know. But the plot was like some turn of the century, silent film melodrama. The feud with the other geisha Hatsumomo was an absurd subtheme in my opinion, as was the novel-long, nauseating idolation of "The Chairman". I bought this because of all the great reviews I saw in Amazon.com and because it was such a best seller. Was afraid that, I must be missing something really good here! It's books like this that make me steer clear of modern fiction by and large.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: He writes a novel like watching an artist paints his drawing. What I found is a surprise for me!
Rating:
Summary: A BEAUTIFUL,CONSUMING,MEMORABLE BOOK
Review: I loved this book very much , but for some reason did not know that this was not a true story....I'm glad I learned that at the end of the book or it would have spoiled it for me. It was excellent and so beautifully written.
Rating:
Summary: Very compelling!
Review: Although there is no real plot, I found myself immediately drawn into the story each time I picked up the book to continue reading. It was SO INTERESTING. At times I was bothered by what I felt were two-dimensional characters, however, that flatness evoked a sense of Sayuri's futile existence. She was like a leaf that had been tossed into a stream and carried away (there's that water sign). One of the great bonuses of reading a book of this type is that is provokes my interest to learn more by reading and researching a new topic.
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