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
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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