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A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity: A Novel Hardcover – March 5, 2002

by Whitney Otto (Author)

17 customer reviews

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The bestselling author of How to Make an American Quilt transports us to San Francisco in the early 1980s, a magical, fog-shrouded city suffused—as are many of its denizens—with possibility and restless energy. In A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity, Whitney Otto’s charac-ters congregate night after night at a North Beach bar called the Youki Singe Tea Room, their lives conjoined by the bonds of friendship and shared experience. At the Youki Singe, the stories of these young people’s lives—their parties, their eccentric living situations, their passions for books and art and one another—are recorded in one patron’s “pillow book,” her version of the intimate journals of the courtesans of Edo Japan. Meanwhile, though, the careless joys of the drifting life are giving way to a desire to find something more substantial, a need to belong to something or someone.

The title A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity is taken from a series of woodblock prints by the eighteenth-century artist Utamaro, a master at depicting Japan’s legendary Floating World, where, it is said, the patrons of the great pleasure quarters—and their escorts—devoted them-selves to the pursuit of music, sex, food, poetry, theater, and fashion. Now, two hundred years later and an ocean away, the young men and women of Otto’s San Francisco find themselves in their own version of a Floating World.
Illustrated with more than two dozen beautifully reproduced woodblock prints, A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity conjures an atmosphere both dreamy and contemporary. Whitney Otto engages the senses as well as the mind while exploring the intricacies, the trouble, and the rapture of human connection.

A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity: A Novel

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Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (March 5, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375505458
ISBN-13: 978-0375505454
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.2 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,411,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #74785 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary
- #174141 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

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Customer Reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars

5 star		41%
4 star		18%
3 star		23%
2 star		18%
1 star		0%

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Top Customer Reviews

Overwhelmingly marvelous.

By erica on September 9, 2002

Format: Hardcover

This is an amazing book. It is beautiful, enchanting, and a little bit cynical. The plot weaves in and out among itself: the book is composed of a series of what at first appear to be independent short stories, but soon begin to link and spread, forming a connecting and disconnecting network. The stories skip in and out of time and place, following a pattern in theme rather than in chronology; the discontinuity can be confusing if you want to remember everything, but it contributes wonderfully to the dissipative, collectivist mood of the book. Each story opens with a copy of a Japanese print and a description that is meant to parallel the events of the story, and the book as a whole is meant to reflect a famous Japanese diary. These connections are occasionally obvious and often obscure; searching for them is part of the excitement of reading such an interwoven work. The prose is always smooth and often beautiful, and the characters and plot are developed with a distinct sense of artistry. The book as a whole is amazingly balanced, readable, and occasionally stunning. It deserves to be read slowly and in a quiet room.

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A reader from Switzerland

By G. Arino on September 19, 2002

Format: Hardcover

This book was brillant. If you only read one book this year, make it this one! It was enchanting, engrossing and I couldn't put it down. The japanese prints were a nice and fitting touch to intricately woven stories and the characters, while not always accessible (I think that was the point) were interesting and warm. I loved the back drop of San Francisco and the descriptions of the inside of the tea room.
Otto is an amazing writer. I have read all of her books (more than once!) and would recommend all of them highly. She is creative, articulate, intelligent and has a way with words. You won't regret it!

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a world to float away to

By Deborah Condon on May 21, 2002

Format: Hardcover

I found this book very charming. The front page of each chapter contains a lovely pictorial reference to the Japanese floating world of Edo, a reinforcement of the feeling the book evokes, of an ephemeral age and time - a signature of a particluar generation - this one in the 1980's in a city that itself is a delight - San Francisco. Its characters are an ensemble of detached, almost superficial, visually cued men and women (boys and girls?) of late twenties redeemed by their sense of kindness and by open caring and affection. It reminded me very much of a book of equal sweetness set a decade ealier in the 1970's - Vibram Seth's The Golden Gate, a lyrical poem set in the Bay Area that captured the mixed up romances and changes of a different, more hopeful, pre-AIDS generation. Both books have a lightness and loving nature with the City itself more a stage than stadt.
The chapters intertwine characters and timelines like a Shakespearean Oberon, Titania and the path-crossing lovers. The only shortfall is that we never get to know any one character very well. All educated, some are users, some self-consciously detached, a few with a described past, none with exact ambitions. What they all share is a "floating" before landing into the not yet arrived-at weight of jobs, marriage, committment, irrevocable choices or downhill slides, as they pass into their 30's. Maybe many of us landed earlier, especially now that marriage is a sooner thing than it was in the 70's and 80's. But even without a connection to either a belated coming of age, being young in the 80's or a feeling for S.F. (I lived in S.F. in the 70-80's), this is still a reading pleasure, at least a light read for the beach, a cut above the predictable romances. It's bound to refresh.

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A little jewel box of prose

By Laurie A. Brown VINE VOICE on October 15, 2014

Format: Hardcover

I found this an odd book. Not just the format- vignettes loosely bound together, styled after a Japanese courtesan’s ‘pillow book’ from the Edo period , each vignette featuring a different member of a group of friends. Set in 1980s San Francisco, these friends are late 20 somethings, all well educated but none working in the field that they are educated for. They float through life; drinking, smoking pot and sometimes doing coke, attending art openings and going to restaurants but mainly meeting at the Youki Singe Tea Room, a North Beach dive where pot smoking is allowed- but only in a small room.
Elodie is the woman who sets the tales down. She writes only when in the Tea Room, leaving her notebooks there. The characters- the collection of beauties- seem to have no ambition, content to simply live like butterflies, pushed by the winds of life. Connections between them turn to love, break up, and realign. There is no real plot; it’s just events happening in the vignettes.

While reading the book, I didn’t much care for most of the characters. Which makes it odd that I later found myself thinking about them, and going back and rereading sections of the book. The prose is beautiful.The vignettes are like little jewels. The book is physically beautiful, too, illustrated mostly with old Japanese woodblock prints but with a couple of 20th century works. To read this book is enjoyable, even if I didn’t connect with most of the characters.

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Exquisite Melancholy

By P. Bradley on May 10, 2002

Format: Hardcover

Whitney Otto writes (in her usual wonderful prose) a tale of the late twentieth century's "lost generation." Using a storeline loosely inspired by a series of Japanese prints of beautiful courtesans, Otto writes of a group of intelligent young women struggling for purpose and love in 1980's San Francisco. Her observations on friendship vs. love, ambition vs. worth, art vs. celebrity, and youth vs. age are all dead-on and often gently humorous. My only complaint is the over-all tone of melancholy, but perhaps that is how many clear-sighted people perceive modern life.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Truly a collection of beauties

I've read two other Whitney Otto books, both insightful and rich in their story and content. THIS treasure, however, moves to the top of my list. Read more

Published on October 11, 2012 by MLG

The Best

I have never read a novel that has captured me in all aspects. I cannot count the amount of times I have read this book and yet any time I lose it I order another copy. Read more

Published on October 27, 2006 by H. Cuyler

Beauty Is In The Eyes Of The Beholder.

All of her little books have Oriental book jackets, all similar, and she uses the same format of short vignettes to tell varied and many stories. Read more

Published on April 14, 2005 by Betty Burks

To Be Young Was Very Heaven

I bought this right after reading The Passion Dream Book by her - which I loved. I liked this one a lot too. Read more

Published on October 11, 2004 by H. Rose

Unusual and Interesting!

Otto's book reads as many short stories about love, finding love, or missing love that are interconnected. The characters all know each other or someone who knows that person. Read more

Published on July 23, 2004 by L. Redding

beautiful writing, but a bit all over the place...

It is impossible not to be transported back to the early 1980's in San Francisco while reading this book. Read more

Published on January 13, 2003 by Victory Silvers

Well written but didnt like the characters

This book left me with a bad feeling. It is well written and I found myself reflecting on insights it offered about people in general. However, I didnt like the characters. Read more

Published on November 18, 2002 by Lectora

Artsy artsy...

Otto tries to make a parallel with the Japanese pillowbooks (a Japanese courtisan's version of a journal with random thoughts scrawled in bed) with this particular book. Read more

Published on July 29, 2002 by James Tsai

Was just okay for me.........

I thought when I originally got this book that it was short stories written about the paintings- I was wrong. Read more

Published on June 1, 2002