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Title: The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt ISBN: 0-7868-8700-1 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (69 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Every time I read this book it sends me into fits of giggles
Comment: The back says it's a story about a genus boy and his mother. And yes, it absolutely is. But it's also a book that's less about missing fathers than about keeping mothers. It has everything and nothing to do with the movie The Seven Samurai. It acts as a kind of a rosetta stone for Japanese, Inuit, Norse, Greek & Latin. It sideswipes the basic principles of aerodynamics, some math, history, philosophy, religion and death. And yet, I kind of think the author is in love with adventure novels and travel writers too. I don't want to really bore you with the details (or reduce an amazing book to paltry words written by a half-rate lit critic like myself). Suffice it to say, every time I read this book it moves me. It makes me giggle - loudly and usually inappropriately. I read in a coffee shop for two hours on Wednesday night and made snarf-choke-chuckle sounds so often I know I drew stares. Each time I read it I'm caught up by the diction, the style, the brain, the sarcasm and the intense joy. I cannot recommend this book enough. I'm in the process of buying it for those I love so they will know what all the fuss is about. If you're smart, you'll read it too.
Rating: 5
Summary: Let me be a worthy samurai
Comment: This book is joyful and thrilling. The intimate and familiar story of a single mother struggling to raise a young son is made original and even epic by the sheer elasticity and power of author Helen DeWitt's imagination. Mother and Son, Sybilla and Ludo, both possessed of gifted and versatile minds, are obsessed with the Kurosawa classic, The Seven Samurai (a film I always felt forced to appreciate until I read this book). Syb uses the film to provide the male role models the boy doesn't have in his life, and Ludo uses it to develop his own version of a Samurai test with which he plans to find the best father possible for himself. Armed with the refrain that 'a good samurai will parry the blow' he sets out to test and win over men of samurai mettle who might recognize his merits. The true joy of reading the book comes in the fact that even though mother and son are both geniuses, multi lingual and well versed in history, literature, math and sciences, thier pursuits in learning and discovery seem exciting and comprehensible. What at first description might sound intellectually intimidating (Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fourier Analysis and a blow by blow with variations on the theme of the Rosetta Stone) are made accessible and often hilarious by the dazzling ingenuity and finesse of the wonderful Dewitt. Reading it made me feel I had suddenly come across a vast unrealized potential in myself for the power of creative thought and the ability to comprehend complex ideas. All this disguised in a book of fabulous adventure and tremendous longing.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fun to read and great idea
Comment: It is very interesting to see how would Ludo face the world. A genius but he is still a child. It is very funny how he reacts to the world and search for a father. I still don't see a tight "connection" between Ludo and the "Seven Samurai". Also, the ending seems a little sudden.
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Title: The Last Samurai Official Movie Guide by John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Swick, David James ISBN: 1931933634 Publisher: General Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Last Samurai : The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori by Mark Ravina ISBN: 0471089702 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 14 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinsu by Yuzan Daidoji, Oscar Ratti ISBN: 0804831904 Publisher: Tuttle Publishing Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Bushido: The Way of the Samurai (Square One Classics) by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Justin F. Stone, Minoru Tanaka ISBN: 0757000266 Publisher: Square One Publishers Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, William Scott Wilson ISBN: 4770011067 Publisher: Kodansha International (JPN) Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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