There is a bit of the cultural expansiveness of Dickens or Zola here, and if Komayo’s dilemma feels a bit light to a modern...
The first complete English translation of Kafu’s 1918 portrait of geisha life is historically gripping, if not quite dramatically so.
Recently widowed Komayo has returned to Tokyo to take up the only livelihood she knows, the profession of geisha. Lovely, in her mid-20s, she hits on a bit of luck when she runs into Yoshioka at the theater. He’s now a successful businessman. Komayo was Yoshioka’s first encounter with a geisha back in his student days. Still enchanted with her, he wants to reestablish their connection. It is not long before Yoshioka becomes her patron, a euphemism tangled in the complex economic and social structure of geisha life. Though ostensibly hostesses, geisha are financially indebted to the house that represents them (for their costly wardrobes and board), and the only feasible way to be released from contract is to acquire a patron who will hopefully buy it. Sexual favors are traded for patronage, and the geisha will hedge her bets by having a number of patrons, hoping one will repay the debt, in effect creating a life of limited, genteel prostitution. Away on holiday Komayo meets Segawa, a rising star on the stage, and the two begin a love affair. She tries to keep Segawa a secret, but soon Yoshioka finds out and begins to plot her humiliation. Meanwhile, Komayo becomes involved with a grotesque antiques dealer, whose patronage helps pay for the increasing expenses Komayo incurs in gifts for Segawa. Into these complications come the rivals of the novel’s title—other geishas who steal the attention of Yoshioka and Segawa. Originally serialized, the novel detours into the lives of those in the Shimbashi geisha district of 1912, offering for view the hangers-on, hack writers, men of power and the waitresses and attendants who serve the geisha, in effect shaping a beautifully realized portrait of this significant Japanese subculture.
There is a bit of the cultural expansiveness of Dickens or Zola here, and if Komayo’s dilemma feels a bit light to a modern sensibility, Kafu creates a world around her that is fascinating to behold.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-231-14118-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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