This is the story of a single mother and her unbelievably precocious child.

I really liked the style of writing, particular in the beginning of the book when Ludo was still a toddler. Sybilla's streams of thought currently interrupted by a curious child highlighted how difficult motherhood is.

As Ludo grows, he begins to search for his father. In, perhaps, a rather unconventional manner.

I have not read any other book like this one,. Though it was not always enjoyable (honestly, I found Sybilla to be a bit tedious), I am glad I did it.


Recommended.

A story about a young boy, Ludo, who lives with his depressed and somewhat snobbish (possibly even negligent) mother. Ludo knows little or nothing about his father, and his mother has no intention of enlightening him it seems. This book is quite a challenging read at times but the humour lifts it somewhat making for a generally enjoyable read.

I felt so sorry for Ludo in this book because he is the victim of some really negligent parenting. His mother is depressed, and too embarrassed to tell her son who his father is as she considers him beneath her. Sibyl is a tremendous snob, and looks down on anyone without her linguistic dexterity.
She chooses to exhibit her poor son as a performing monkey in carriages of the Circle Line. We are never given the idea that her parents are bad, and they clearly have money. Sibyl prefers to hang on to her principles and live in perjury, whatever the cost to her son.
Of course, Ludo is academically brilliant, and would make a great Cambridge don, but nothing else. All his learning comes from books, and is interior. He has no exterior life, or knowledge of how to be a kid, and to feel how a kid feels. His quest to find a father, based on archetypes from Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, is amusing, but also pretty tragic.
He wanders the streets of London, and stakes out the houses of various dubious men, and Sibyl seems at best vaguely concerned, as she is too busy wallowing in self-pity. Ludo manages to be very enterprising, but this leads to some downright dangerous and traumatic events, even if he doesn't recognise them as such.
There is some great discussion of language in this book, and the repartee between Ludo and Sybil is like verbal jousting. It is, however, completely inappropriate for a mother and son relationship. If Ludo is really lucky he will be able to afford a good therapist later in life.
Like the curate’s egg, this book is excellent is parts. Leaving aside the book's unsuitability is a parenting manual, I would recommend it to anyone with a sense of curiosity. It can be very funny.

This is a challenging book to read and it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea!

The Last Samurai is a book where you’re never quite sure where you’re going next and at what speed, you only know it’s going to be unconventional. To make sure you remain connected to the tone of the main characters the writing style adopts the same characteristic.

Ludo is a 6-year-old language and literary genius and his mother Sibylla is also intellectually gifted. I mean seriously gifted where they home-study mathematics, science, literature, and multiple languages including Greek, Hebrew, Japanese and Arabic. They ride the London Underground’s Circle line all day with their pushchair filled with books so they can keep warm because they can’t afford to heat their house. I couldn’t rationalise why someone with Sibylla’s intelligence and capability would be struggling to earn money in London.

Sibylla sees, hears and feels the world differently to other people and the story can shoot off in unsuspecting tangents, just like the mind of Sibylla, and plunge into great detail. There is this obsession from mother and son with the 7 Samurai film in its original Akira Kurosawa version. Ludo wants to know who his father is and Sibylla categorically refuses to tell him. Over the next 6 years, Ludo decides to use a scene from the 7 Samurai film as a blueprint to map out, and identify 7 potential father figures, and determine which it is – the one who can parry the blow, as a real Samurai could do.

Sibylla’s dilemmas and her analysis of every situation can be quite funny and there is a generally dry and black humour throughout the book. Put intellectual logic into the hands of an innocent 6-year-old boy and his engagements with other adults are really hilarious. Starting school left the teacher exasperated.

The last 40% of the book is mainly told through the eyes of Ludo and his quest to find his father. The narrative falls into a steady pace and it’s at this point you realise, what was a challenge in reading the book at the beginning, is now missing.

At times I got frustrated with the book as it seemed to ramble and provide detail I wasn’t interested in, and I didn’t feel added to the story. Other times certain passages were so cleverly written that they were just genius. Overall it didn’t hold my interest enough and being nearly 600 pages, it was an effort.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage Publishing, for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.

At first sight this is dazzlingly erudite but almost immediately DeWitt undercuts the intellectualism: with wit, with acuity, she navigates a story which both valorises knowledge and intellectual pursuits but also recognises the limitations of pure mind when it comes to living what philosophers term 'a good life'.

This is a book which zooms between disciplines: music, maths, literature, language all play important parts - and we should note the character's names: Sybilla and Ludo, because there's no end to the layered game playing.

Beneath all this, though, is a boy's relationship with his mother and search for a father - biological or other. And it's this melding of the experimental style with a classic story which gives the book both edge and heart.

Ludo is a child prodigy, conceived after a one night stand and tutored by his mother in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. He greedily absorbs facts and foreign languages from the age of four - rather like the robot Johnny 5 ("input! I need input’) in the film ‘Short Circuit’. Apart from satisfying his intellectual curiosity, Ludo eventually becomes obsessed with another quest - to find his biological father, and searches for suitable candidates, based on the seven male role models in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.
So much for any kind of linear plot ... this is predominantly a novel of ideas, full of recondite literary and artistic allusions, which pushes against the usual novelistic boundaries and conventions. If there is an overriding theme it is the importance of artistic integrity and how it can be compromised and dictated by the market. It's a challenging but also entertaining read – and is guaranteed to stimulate the brain cells.