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Sep 19, 2011

Matt rated it:

[no spoilers]

One of my favorite books ever. I don't know is how time will affect my opinion of it, but I think it could last.

It's a novel about the normal and the eccentric, about learning, about languages, music, art, and Kurosawa. It's about the shape of brilliance. It doesn't sacrifice philosophy or intellectualism for narrative power or vice versa. Each smaller narrative wound into the whole is like story-candy. There is nothing to dislike: the style, the form, t More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

Lee rated it:

Especially recommended to cold cerebral dudes with liberal arts degrees in English Lit who rarely read fiction by living women. Would also recommend it to those who loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog but thought it might have been a bit twee.

Just re-read after 10 years after really enjoying DeWitt's very different second novel, Lightning Rods, which just came out. In the past decade I've crammed in a few hundred novels, a few hundred pages of my own writing, and an MFA etc. And it's More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Oct 28, 2011

Rob rated it:

a great book. or, at least the first 400 pages were amazingly wonderfully perfect, and the last 100 pages were good enough. but endings always suck ass, so five stars anyway.

plus, it's the first fiction by a woman since ayn rand that i loved (don't hold that against me. it's like mandatory for nerdy teenage boys, isn't it?). that's a 14-year drought! and lord knows i tried.

i don't understand why some novels about ordinary people struggling with ordinary crap are con More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 08, 2010

Jimmy rated it:

Kitano Takeshi's recent film, Achilles and the Tortoise (Akiresu to Kame) manipulates Zeno's paradox as moral allegory in order to make a point about the impossible progess of artistic creation in a linear, rational way. In other words, Machisu's character - in early childhood portrayed as a spoiled, overprivileged brat who's artistic inclinations are encouraged to an almost absurd degree - eventually comes to believe that by merely mimicking artistic styles of past masters he can attain artist More...

4 comments like (9 people liked it)

Nov 27, 2007

Max rated it:

Woah. Amazing book - flashy, but with a chewy center. The author spends most of the novel being so awesome it's almost over the top, but fortunately she never goes too far. The characters are all profound and compelling, and deeply tragic in their own individual ways; the themes of connection between geniuses, and of self-isolation, really hit home, and Ludo turned from an excellent plot device in the early chapters to an excellent character in the later ones. And, surprisingly, a blazingly More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2007

Emily rated it:

Now that book club discussion has passed I feel I can write this review. Before I get started, let me say I think this book is the type you need to let sit for awhile before you decide exactly how you feel, and my ideas are still evolving. My overall impression was that the characters were well drawn. The ideas about intelligence -- and its horrid connection with loneliness/isolation -- were the kind of thing that would make any good reader salivate, and they were done quite well. I don't kn More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2012

Clara rated it:

This book gave me one of the more mixed reading experiences in recent memory. There were sections of it that I just LOVED! so much that I wanted to pester everyone I knew with excerpts; other parts were so repetitive and annoying that I almost quit reading. Sweartogod the exact same scene is repeated almost word-for-word chapter after chapter in the first part of the book (and I am docking a full star for that dastardly stunt). I realize some might argue this repetition is meant to evoke emotion More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 22, 2007

Rebecca rated it:

If you like Haruki Murakami, you will like this book more. It's smarter, with the same pornographic interest in Information and obscurity. (Without all the weird adolescent girls there to lolita the author's life in fiction, cleanly.</p>

I make it a rule not to read my book jackets until I'm done with the book. I only read books based on whim or recommendation and this one came from a dear friend and another mega-reader. Upon finishing the book, I read the jacket and there were More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2007

Zoe rated it:

This was a fantastic book. It took me a little bit to figure out that she would jump back and forth between different points in a given situation, but once I got that, it was great. Ludo's search for a father is touching, and his realization that he can choose for himself is a brilliant moment of self-determination.
To me it seems that there is a progression in the kind of person who he chooses, and the later choices are much more human in their connection to the world and not simply famou More...

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Sep 17, 2008

Erik rated it:

Not a 3 star book, but a 1 star book and a 5 star book.

1 star because her prose is clunky ("He said:... I said:... He said:...") and banal ("The wind is howling. A cold rain is falling.") Because her experiments with form are juvenile and obnoxious. Above all, because it's the type of book that wants to entrench itself against criticism (well of course the prose and form are that way because that's the type of people these characters are!), rather than simply b More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Nicole rated it:

How is this book so good? I took my time reading it over the course of a week, and when I reached the ending I was incredibly disappointed, not because of how it ended but merely because it HAD to end. Amazing. The last third of it left an empty space where my heart used to be, but it was worth it. Although it did make me feel like I've been wasting my life and I'll never learn enough languages or read enough books.

(Haha, was reading it at coffee house one day, and no less than More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Caroline rated it:

I wasn't going to review this but none of the other reviews really said what I want say. I was disappointed by the book in a few ways. FIrstly it's quite disjointed, the first half set in America about her parents and so on is almost a different book from the later half in England. I did enjoy toying with the idea of such a child genius and although it was taken rather too far to be realistic I think that was part of the point of it. Not being particuarly multilingual myself I did wonder about a More...

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Feb 21, 2010

Moira added it

"Enjoyable novel about a boy seeking his father, who has apparently gone the way of the quotation mark. Roughly as good as Dave Eggers's second novel—engaging, astounding, recommended, but ever so slightly less than I'd expected. (Darn that Foer for spoiling every other book ever.) Given the prolific trivia on language, physics, math, and cinema, Dewitt clearly is either a genius or possesses mad reference skills. Passages:

An American in Britain has sources of solace available nowhere el

More...

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Dec 29, 2011

Jpmist rated it:

Yikes, boy this book put me in my place pretty fast, I guess I'm not an intellectual as is Helen DeWitt who spent 10 years in academia and puts it all to as much use as possible in this book.

The book is simply incoherent and thereby unreadable as any type of narrative.

I went to the party. As so often it was much easier to come with the plan of leaving after 10 minutes than to leave after 10 minutes, for instead of making a polite excuse to leave after 10 minutes I found mys More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Isaac rated it:

I happened to pick this up when my wife brought it home from the library. Normally I don't read novels. The cover art was attractive, but it's not the cover you see here. I liked the prologue. Then the book got odd, which is not necessarily bad. Then Becky started asking about it.
Her: Is it good?
I said: I'm not sure. I think so.
Her: What's it about?
I said: I'm not sure.
She said dos it have a plot?
I said what does that matter? I thought really there are only a few wa More...

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Aug 30, 2011

Kohl rated it:

This book is not about Samurai, but it is one of the most unique books I have ever read. I don't even know of any books like it! (that doesn't mean there aren't any). I picked it up because I thought it was about Samurai, and the front flap sold me. A few moths later I saw it at the Library and since a large part of it is about languages and linguistics, I got it for Chris and read it for myself. I intended to have her read it first, but one day I was in a creative slump and quite depressed. I p More...

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Jan 23, 2011

Alex rated it:

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, her debut novel, is a book quite unlike any other, and in the process of reading it, one learns the basics of ancient Greek and Japanese. It is set in the present day, but within the pages echo the ancient past where the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as other Greek classics, are rediscovered.

The main character is the mother of a child prodigy. She herself is exceptionally intelligent, but due to the lack of a father figure in the family, she is left More...

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Mar 18, 2010

Minodora rated it:

okay, i wasn't crazy about mark haddon's 'the curious incident..' and i wasn't crazy about the writing in this novel either. i only have two words: tristram shandy. that novel was published in nine parts in 1906, and was innovative for its time back then. on the other hand, helen dewitt's dry, at times quirky, ramblings don't impress me. the narrator in the first chapters is Sibylla, and those i tolerated just fine, really strong cohesive writing here, but towards the end, when Ludo gets more an More...

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Jan 22, 2010

Blair rated it:

This is a really impressive debut novel. In the foreword it mentions briefly how long the author has been working on this novel and it shows. The extensive research that must have gone into this novel is simply astounding. Helen Dewitt possesses an intellect and intelligence that may well rival the likes of Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson. The only problem with such a vast novel is that I think Dewitt may have burned herself out on the technical information contained in this novel, while m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Robert rated it:

DeWitt's debut novel demonstrates excellent stylistic control and adventurousness often using a lack of punctuation to create a breathless pace that when sustained for long periods tends to leave one breathless and nursing an incipient headache before

interruption by another character
reply
repeated interruption
reply

continuing where it left of in mid sentence or even mid wor

interruption
interruption
INTERRUPTION

d which can More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2007

Mary rated it:

Really excellent. A paean to autodidacticism, to the study of language, and to Kurosawa's masterpiece of modern cinema, The Seven Samurai. A reflection on human potential, on isolation, on the limits of intelligence. Smart, funny, a pleasure to read.

Entirely unrelated to that movie of the same name with Tom Cruise.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 28, 2007

Datuk rated it:

In the couple chapters, I think this book give me a point of view, how the globalization in Meida little boy can influences for nation building he just open mind in Europe culture and militer of course, but I'd say.... he is a new rule in Japan, he is 15 year old.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Levi rated it:

Here’s the thing: This is a book about an unbelievably precocious/brilliant boy – he is five at the beginning of the book, and at the end he’s eleven. He knows more languages than anyone you’ve ever heard of, has read most of the classics before his sixth birthday, can do college-level math and hold conversations with brilliant adults, etc., etc. You’ve read this book before, you think, and I don’t blame you for thinking that. But trust me, you haven’t. DeWitt takes this potentially cliched star More...

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Dec 07, 2008

veronica rated it:

I loved this book like crazy. It's a giddy, nerdy exploration of what happens when a dysfunctional - yet fun! -- family of brilliant savants cloister themselves with Japanese cinema for way too long. Take a depressive, braniac mother, her wunderkind son and a small army of possible (swashbuckling, adventurer, academic) fathers -- and you've got the story. It's a little more of a difficult read than what I've been reading lately, but I was really glad to have a little bit of a challenge for a cha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 06, 2008

Jenne rated it:

I loved this.

At first I thought it was the book that the Tom Cruise movie was based on, so I didn't read it because I thought the movie was stupid.

And then I read the synopsis, that says it's about a single mother raising a son who ends up searching for his father, and I thought well, THAT story hasn't been written one million times already, pass.

BUT it was recommended in a discussion of women writers who are similar to Neal Stephenson, so I thought I would More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Mike rated it:

Six stars! Seven stars! Hell, a herd of stars. We’re givin’ em away (liberated and reworked from The Tubes’ White Punks on Dope).

Finding exactly the right book at exactly the right time doesn’t happen very often. Finding exactly the right book at all doesn’t happen often enough. This one found its way to me through the oddest of circumstances—via Lee (his review), clumsy fingers, and time at the deathbed of my mother—it is what it is.

I follow Lee’s reviews and checked out the one for The Last Sa

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14 comments like (15 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

Peter rated it:

One of the most unusual books I have ever read. It centers on a single mother raising a savant son. She decides he needs male role models. Having no close male relatives or friends she uses the film "Seven Samurai" to teach her son what it means to be a man. Her brilliant son (I think he can read something like 6 languages by the age of 5) uses the film as a road map in his search for who his real father. Told from the point of view of both the mother and son the book fully delves into More...

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Dec 19, 2008

Jeff rated it:

This was the second of the "hyper-intelligent child of hyper-intelligent single parent trying to fit into society" books that I recently read "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" was the first. I was able to identify more easily with the narrators here than in Special Topics, primarily because they both seemed to have clear desires, whereas the girl's desires in Special Topics were often about about avoidance. The Last Samurai also integrated culture and literature into the p More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2010

Thomas rated it:

Let me start off by saying, because I'll be posting this to my blog, that this book has nothing to do with the film starring Tom Cruise. The film was fine, I don't have anything against it, but the stories could not be more different, except that they both have to do with Samurai, in one way or another.

Helen DeWitt put everything into this book. That's not to say she tried to cram the whole world into 500 pages, it's just to say that she put herself into this book. All of it. I have More...

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Nov 03, 2010

Madhuri rated it:

The Last Samurai is one book, which, even without clearly knowing what post-modernism is, I can call post-modern with some conviction. It has so many stylistic elements that could have never been found in traditional literature. The perspective changes in the middle of the book, there are many stories and anecdotes, and Kurosawa's Seven Samurai always keeps holding the background.

The book goes through many things, primary amongst them is a young woman's attempt to bring up a child alon More...

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