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Rating: 
Summary: Shadow-worlds and whirls of girls--
Review: Cynthia Gralla is a fabulous new voice in fiction. The novel draws the reader into Liza's world of beauty and image, risk and reward. Beautifully written, Gralla's work calls to mind the lyrical and visceral prose of Ondaatje's English Patient, exotic and richly-spiced, with the intelligence and historical framework reminiscent of Nabokov or Durrell. The reader comes away changed, as though Liza's journey into her own "dance of utter darkness" had served as a scrying mirror in which one could divine those things hidden and secret within us all.
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Summary: Beautiful and terrifying
Review: Gralla's first novel has left me feeling a bit on-edge, as if I was caught off guard and saw something I wasn't supposed to see or wasn't quite ready for. The world she describes is gorgeous, seductive and terrifying. And her style of writing matches it perfectly. I'll have to reread it soon to try to get a better sense of what was real and what might have been hallucination, though I'm not sure it really matters, the two are seamlessly interwoven into Liza's reality. I may actually have nightmares about the maiko; I envision them as pale, pale creatures with sweet, quiet smiles and razor sharp teeth. I was unable to put this book down until I'd finished it; this is the book I'll be buying for all my friends!
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Summary: A highly original and beautiful book
Review: I picked up this book in the store because I was intrigued by the cover and the subject matter, particular its Tokyo setting. But after I was up all night reading it, I found that it covered an unexpectedly wide range of themes: relationships, love, dance, art, war, being in a foreign country, and anorexia (to name a few!) Specifically, this book gives probably the most lyrical and complex description of the experience of anorexia that I've ever read. The passages about Liza's body and dance training are haunting. Although there is no explicit sex in the book, it is deeply erotic. People who like the films of David Lynch will love this book -- it has that same dreamlike quality. Evocative, engrossing, and full of sensuous writing, it's a very rare and special read. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Mind-Altering Read
Review: Reading this book was like reading a drug and becoming entwined in a foreign boundary-less netherworld of the senses. To say it was lyrical is totally inadequate. It was a labyrinth of discovery, a mesmerizing, poetic, erotic journey into the unknown. I've never, ever become immersed in a book the way I did with this one. I felt as if I'd tumbled into the story and become Liza. It left me dizzy, dazed, exhausted and wanting more. I highly recommend this book if you want to truly experience another culture. The language is pure magic and the plot ingenious.
Rating:
Summary: Mind-Altering Read
Review: Reading this book was like reading a drug and becoming entwined in a foreign boundary-less netherworld of the senses. To say it was lyrical is totally inadequate. It was a labyrinth of discovery, a mesmerizing, poetic, erotic journey into the unknown. I've never, ever become immersed in a book the way I did with this one. I felt as if I'd tumbled into the story and become Liza. It left me dizzy, dazed, exhausted and wanting more. I highly recommend this book if you want to truly experience another culture. The language is pure magic and the plot ingenious.
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Summary: Beautiful and terrifying
Review: THE FLOATING WORLD stunned me with its beauty. Gralla's book uses a charmed lyrical language to capture the spectre of a great city traumatized by the legacy of the war that destroyed it and built post-modernity out of its rubble. The story maps onto the frantic and ecstatic bodies that float and trail through it all the psychic scars of a nation still hearing the terrible echoes of the radioactive blast. Liza, the book's main character, finds herself literally dissolving between the hedonistic world of the pleasure quarter where she works as an escort and the universe of divine movement -- no less ordered, but free from the corrupting influence of money -- in the butoh dancing she loves. In the end, her life becomes an hallucination that is both beautiful and deadly. I can't wait to sit down and read it again. Better yet, bring on Gralla's next book!
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Summary: The Floating World
Review: Wonderfully lyrical novel, touching the senses like a rose bud unfolding - colors swimming in the light, fragrance blossoming as the petals unfold, but soft petals adjacent to sharp thorns. Intriguing, frightening, and spellbinding. A young woman both caught up in and energizing an exotic, erotic world of would-be geishas and hostesses in modern-day Japan. All my friends are now reading this mesmerizing first novel by Cynthia Gralla.
Rating:
Summary: The Floating World
Review: Wonderfully lyrical novel, touching the senses like a rose bud unfolding - colors swimming in the light, fragrance blossoming as the petals unfold, but soft petals adjacent to sharp thorns. Intriguing, frightening, and spellbinding. A young woman both caught up in and energizing an exotic, erotic world of would-be geishas and hostesses in modern-day Japan. All my friends are now reading this mesmerizing first novel by Cynthia Gralla.
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