Product Description
Review
Being a Japanese woman in America is not easy - or so Kiki, the narrator of this wistful, perceptive and unusual story, tells us. In New York, she lives with two men: the ghost of her dead ex-lover and her handsome fiance. This is not a story about men, though. It belongs to women: to Kiki, to her mother and to her distant grandmother, a geisha who returns to her old ways. This brings to light some of the issues from the mix of two cultures through a compelling narrative. (Kirkus UK)
Newcomer Yoshikawa tries but fails to weave the story of a young woman's doomed love affair in Manhattan seamlessly together with the tale of her Japanese grandmother who was once a geisha. Kiki, the narrator, is a graduate student in English at Columbia and, as the story begins, thinks she may be in love with Eric, a handsome young Jewish lawyer she met at a concert. But she is also literally haunted by Phillip, the love of her life, who was killed while climbing in the Himalayas. Kiki keeps seeing Phillip in her apartment - on the window sill, in the kitchen, on a shelf - which doesn't help her affair with Eric, though she soon accepts his proposal of marriage. As Kiki recalls how she met Phillip, a young man born to wander and charm, and as she worries that Eric may have a fetish about Asian women, she writes imaginary letters to her grandmother Yukiko, who, now a widow, has promised to visit Kiki and her mother, Akiko, in the fall. Kiki identifies strongly with her grandmother and looks forward to hearing Yukiko herself tell the story of her life. Meanwhile, Kiki relates the tales Akiko has previously told her. Sold by her parents to a geisha house, beautiful young Yukiko used guile and sex to marry a rich businessman and become a respectable member of society. Akiko defied her mother and married for love, but her brilliant, unstable husband later abandoned her. As the past and present stories move awkwardly in tandem, Yukiko cancels her travel plans, and Kiki, still mourning Phillip, breaks up with Eric. Watching Akiko with a new love on a visit home, Kiki realizes that someday she too will move on from Phillip - and that, like Yukiko and Akiko, she will always be grateful for having loved at all. Trendy Asian elements do little to gussy up an unconvincing love story. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
According to Japanese culture, a geisha is taught 101 ways to please a man. Kiki Takehashi is descended from a line of strong-willed women. The granddaughter of a geisha, Kiki realises that she has to accept her family heritage before she can hope to understand her own tangled relationships.
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