Review by Booklist Review
The time is now in New York City, and Kiki is a graduate student in literature at Columbia. She is deeply self-conscious, but she is also deeply conscious of her mother and grandmother and the love lines between them. Kiki's grandmother was a geisha who eventually married a client; Kiki's mother emigrated from Japan with the man she loved and lost him to drink. Kiki tells her mother's and grandmother's stories as a way of telling her own: Phillip, the man she loved and lost, haunts her in a very real way, and Phillip's death clouds her vision of Eric, who wants to marry her. The exquisite construction of this tale unfolds like a kimono, with tiny details floating to the surface like petals. Yoshikawa's language is glittering and seductive; there is a rich eroticism in her descriptions of hair and skin, moths and heat, space and shape. Although there is a connection, certainly, with the work of Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, Yoshikawa's Kiki is as deeply American as she is Japanese American. Separated from her mother and grandmother's language, she finds their stories in her mind and in her blood. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At once a coming-of-age narrative and a ghost story, Yoshikawa's first novel is also a tale of Japanese-American identity and an extraordinarily polished and graceful look at three generations of women and their lost loves. "Whether I like it or not, the lives of my mother and my grandmother are the stars by which I chart my course," observes 26-year-old Kiki Takehashi, a graduate student in English at a university in New York. Kiki's lawyer boyfriend, Eric, has asked her to marry him. But Kiki is quite literally haunted by the love of her life, Philip, who died in a Nepalese avalanche. Philip's ghost now lingers in her apartment, never speaking, real yet ethereal, undermining her romance with Eric. Kiki's grandmother Yukiko, meanwhile, is coming to America. Sold at age 14 to keep her family in rice and pickled plums, Yukiko became a geisha: she spurned her daughter Akiko (Kiki's mother) when Akiko married, and the two have not met in 29 years. Now Yukiko is widowed, Akiko long divorced and Yukiko plans to make up with Akiko and meet her granddaughter, who yearns to ask Yukiko all about love and desire. Yoshikawa's elegant prose adds resonance to this exploration of mothers and daughters, husbands and lovers, sex and commitment, Japan and America. More ethnic than ethnographic, the novel lacks the exotic detail readers cherished in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. Instead, Yoshikawa offers a pensive, erotic, deeply moving tale of three women who must comprehend their pasts before they can move on into their converging futures. (May) FYI: Yoshikawa descends from a long line of samurai; her great-grandmother was a geisha. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This promising first novel is a beautifully written story about a young Japanese American woman who tries to understand her relationships with her lovers by examining the lives of her mother and grandmother. Kiki Takehashi is a young graduate student living in New York City who questions her engagement to Eric as she continues to mourn the death of her former lover, Phillip, who literally comes back to haunt her. Although she does not talk to her mother about her problems, she is close to her and is fascinated by her mother's stories of her grandmother, a former geisha. She processes her thoughts about the loss of Phillip and her future with Eric by imagining the conversations she'll have with her grandmother when she visits from Japan in the fall. Yoshikawa weaves together the stories of three generations of women with wonderful detail and graceful style. Highly recommended for all libraries.ÄJudith Ann Akalaitis, Supreme Court of Illinois Lib., Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
