I really enjoyed the book as it had an unbelievable amount of information about the life of a geisha and the training that is needed to develop the young girls. It was so real that at the end of the story I still was wondering if it were a true story or not. The love story and the triangles that made up the novel could have been trashed as it was a little too 'soap opera' for me. All in all a very good book to educate those who thought geishas were "hookers".