Where my first read was short and sweet and took me two sittings to get through, Geisha took me a long time to finish up. Joe complains about how slow it is to get started but I actually really liked the back story of Chiyo. It gives you really great perspective to the choices she makes later in her life. I also think her sister's story would have no weight if you didn't get the full story of how they became to be sold into the geisha world.
The one thing that really gets me about this book is the culture shock. Being American, there was this amazing quality of unknown. Despite knowing she is a geisha in the end, I still found myself wondering what was going when Chiyo and her sister are taken from their hometown. The culture shock is apparent in every aspect of geisha life. I had absolutely no background knowledge of geisha. It made reading this book really fun because I had no expectations of what was to happen. Even with WWII happening in the middle, I still had no clue how would this would effect the geisha. And I love how "normal" some of the really unusual events feel. The explanation of how they sell their virginity seemed like a completely normal event despite the whole prostitution thing...
I need to get better about this writing thing. It's really hard to write critically about fiction. I'll get better, I promise.
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