The Last Samurai

How wonderful to have DeWitt's debut novel (which has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie) back in print! The story of a brilliant (too brilliant?) mother trying to educate her brilliant (too brilliant?) son as he looks for a father figure (both of them using Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai as a model) is funny, moving, thrilling, and enlightening. And of course brilliant, but not in a merely show-offy way. Brilliance—its burdens, its excitement, its hungry necessity, its self-destructive impatience—is what gives the story its poignancy and its power. It's one of my favorite books of the century so far, and I expect it will remain so no matter how much of this century I see.