In Arthur Golden's debut novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, a variety of styles come to mind. He uses first person style writing, convincing one so much it was true that on could wake up thinking they were a geisha. For the most part though, his descriptive writing is chalk-full of similes and analogies. His descriptions were so realistic and so accurate that one puts their head back in astonishment.

Golden seemed to aim for this, for in an interview he claimed that for a year he tricked readers into believing he simply put down a real geisha's words. However, it is now known that the book is quite fictional.

It may have seemed odd that a man was writing first person as a young woman in the early Twentieth century, but he became inspired by meeting a man in Tokyo who's mother was a geisha. He had studied...