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Summary: A beautifully written, lyrical, evocative wonder of a book.
Review: This is a beautifully written, gorgeous and wonderful book. I found myself surrounded by the inner lives of the three women and couldn't tear myself away from them during the few days it took me to read it. This is a book any woman can relate to, since we all lead lives with images of our mothers and grandmothers intertwining with our own existence, hopes, and dreams, as does KiKi. If you like Barbara Kingsolver or Sue Miller, you're going to love it.
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Summary: This book is lyrically written and very fascinating!
Review: This is a fascinating and moving debut novel by Mako Yoshikawa. The story, narrated by Kiki, a Japanese-American young woman, spans 3 generations of women (Kiki, her mother and her grandmother)who have each lost great loves in their lives and how each comes to grips with their past to face their future. Kiki weaves a spellbinding web of a story about her lost love, Philip. He has died in a mountaineering trip and Kiki can't forget him. In fact, she sees him every waking day in her apartment, even though she has a new lover, successful lawyer, Eric.The most engrossing, lyrically written part of the book is when Kiki tells her grandmother's story of lost love. Kiki compares her life with that of her grandmother, a former geisha, whom she eagerly awaits to visit her in America. The 3 stories are connected effortlessly and smoothly by Yoshikawa. This book is worth reading!
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Summary: winding road of memories
Review: This is a good enough book by Mako Yoshikawa. She intertwines the lives of the main character, her mother and her grandmother, with little confusion. The ending of the book was something that I wasn't expecting, beautiful, vivid and so emotional! But the journey to the end was a long one. Kiki (main character) leads us on this mental path of choosing between a lost love that haunts her (literally) and this new guy in her life, who himself can't seem to decide if he loves her or not. Back, and forth, back and forth. It took me a month to actually sit down and finish this book because of the references being made, but little action being taken. This story could be polished up a bit to make a truly poetic and flowing work of art! It is a good story, with beautiful connections of Kiki to her mother and grandmother. A struggle that all women seem to go through, trying to relate to their mothers, through ways of their grandmothers. THe love story is also a good one, when you finally realize who is actually supposed to be in love!
Rating:
Summary: winding road of memories
Review: This is a good enough book by Mako Yoshikawa. She intertwines the lives of the main character, her mother and her grandmother, with little confusion. The ending of the book was something that I wasn't expecting, beautiful, vivid and so emotional! But the journey to the end was a long one. Kiki (main character) leads us on this mental path of choosing between a lost love that haunts her (literally) and this new guy in her life, who himself can't seem to decide if he loves her or not. Back, and forth, back and forth. It took me a month to actually sit down and finish this book because of the references being made, but little action being taken. This story could be polished up a bit to make a truly poetic and flowing work of art! It is a good story, with beautiful connections of Kiki to her mother and grandmother. A struggle that all women seem to go through, trying to relate to their mothers, through ways of their grandmothers. THe love story is also a good one, when you finally realize who is actually supposed to be in love!
Rating:
Summary: Higly recommended, a book of great depth
Review: This is a strange story about a japanese-american girl whose grandmother was a geisha in her younger days, but ended up as a wealthy and respected woman. Looking into her family's history, Kiki is in the search of herself - recently she has lost the love of her life in a mountaineer accident. As she tries to entangle her thoughts and reflections, in her mind she talks to her grandmother whom she still hasn't met. - This book is full of mystery and of deep layers of meaning. There is a certain "spaciousness" about the way it is written; the writer seems to capture so much more than can be put down in words. Which to me is very much like life itself; we are so captured with the way the world is being described in movies or in books that we sometimes seem to forget that it is a sort of narrative and not quite like the way the world works - even though they can reflect part of it, if not all. The fact that this book contains so much more than the "story", the fact that a whole way of looking at life is being conveyed without putting it directly, but in a gentle and almost meditative way, is what delighted me about it. It has inspired me and even been a kind of comfort to me, by viewing life so nakedly and by transmitting quite a bit of its complexity. I am looking very much forward to the author's next book!
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Summary: A beautiful romantic novel
Review: This novel tracks the love stories of a young Manhattan woman, her expatriate Japanese mother, and her geisha grandmother. The shifts between the contemporary narrative and that of the grandmother, especially, are beautifully handled. I found the whole story totally involving, and sexy, to boot. I really couldn't put it down (I read it in 2 sittings, and I usually take a long time to read a book). I'm looking forward to reading whatever this writer comes up with next.
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Summary: Interesting...a borrow rather than buy....
Review: This was a beautifully written novel, but the characters didn't really stick with me. I'd borrow it rather than buy it...
Rating: 
Summary: Stop, save your money
Review: Total waste of time! The main character keeps lamenting throughout the book about the possibility of her fiancée having an Asian women fetish, when in fact she has the fetish. She only has relationships with Caucasians, yet never explains her aversion to Asian males. The characters have no soul and the background stories are underdeveloped and uninteresting. I wonder if I read the same book as other reviewers that have compared this book to "House of Spirits" Please!
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