The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt The Last Samurai is a challenging book that plays with the form in a lot of interesting ways. I was not expecting it to take on such an interesting structure nor to be challenged so much with the incredible intelligence of the subject matter. Sybilla is a single mother. She is eccentric and highly intelligent, and this brings some very quirky habits into the story and the form of the book. She has a son (Ludo) after a one night stand with a travel writer. Ludo shows incredible aptitude and intelligence at a young age, and Sybilla tutors him at home on a wide variety of subjects to satiate his appetite for knowledge, including maths, languages, and science. She does this while working at home as a typist for various obscure magazines. As Ludo grows and matures the narration switches from Sybilla's pov to Luca's where we learn that Sybilla is not as forthcoming with information as he would like her to be, specifically when it comes to informati...