Book: The Last Samurai - Helen DeWitt

A short review of the last book and definitely the most excitingly weird I read this year.

I enjoyed the introductory chapters about S’s family a lot, but the first few pages of reading L’s thoughts and dialogues were hard to get through. Hard, but in hindsight enjoyable. The character building is great.

I really liked the whole story, it is weird in a nice way how S is obsessed with Seven Samurai, how L, in his mind, matches his whole life around the film. How S raises L and teaches him what she does and doesn’t know. How L starts growing on his own. It’s very interesting reading how one, or maybe two, classical geniuses (I guess L also counts as a STEM genius, even though I get the feeling that the author is not very approving of this - haha) get along with the world, each other, their past and their future.

Both L and S are very likeable and I found it satisfying that I could read their exact thoughts just before they spoke. It’s refreshing to see this type of writing and character building, which -in my mind- is very truthful.

The last few chapters, where L goes on his mission, are completely thrilling. Even though I got through the rest of the book in a couple of weeks, I read those chapters in a couple of days.

I 100% recommend reading this, and getting through it. There are deeper meanings hidden in the book, I am not sure I can grasp all of them, as I am neither S nor L.

Also, the author mentions a hypothetical friendship with Terry Pratchett at the afterword of the book, so bonus points for that :)