I read a lot of books. For the vast majority of them, I don't know anything about the author and don't go looking. Honestly, it's because I'm not that interested - I'm here for the story or the argument, depending on whether it's fiction or non-fiction, and not the author. But occasionally I get curious, and at the end of this book, the acknowledgements section list a geisha called Mineko Iwasaki as the source and inspiration of a lot of the info here. I'd never heard of her and if her life was anything like the book she must be a very interesting woman so I went looking. And what I found I did not like.

Sometimes, in retrospect, you find out something about a creator that is dodgy (see: Bradley, Marion Zimmer). And there's always that question - can you separate the art from the artist? You can make an argument that this is a viable strategy when one absolutely does not reflect the other. There's no hint of child-rape in Rosemary's Baby, for instance, despite the actions of its disgusting director. It's much harder to make that same argument when the behaviour you cannot approve is an integral part of the text.

Iwasaki says that this book is full of inaccuracy. A lot of that inaccuracy is related back to her - the story about the auction of her virginity, for instance, which she says is entirely false. Historical fiction is not historical scholarship, and granted "fiction" is part of the genre title, but I very strongly feel that historical fiction writers have a responsibility to be as accurate as they can. (It's hard not to wonder if the increased salaciousness and general inaccuracy is put there for reasons of exoticism, which is fairly dodgy in itself.) Futhermore, she says that she only spoke to Golden on the condition of anonymity - which as I found myself while reading that final section was a condition that was blithely broken. Apparently she's gotten death threats. That must be lovely. There is zero reason to expose a source this way. Zero. It is not acceptable, and it is part of the book, and that's why for all the pretty language and technically accomplished writing this is getting one star from me. Historical fiction may be fiction, but it should not smack of the gutter tabloids.