Some Trick

"Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is one of my favorite books. Some Trick, her new short story collection, shares themes with that novel. Her characters are savants, weirdos and artists, often trying to achieve their ends against the best efforts of the well-meaning and conventional people around them. DeWitt doesn’t cater: In her fiction, she uses Greek if Greek is called for, or graphs if graphs are called for. The conventional measures of good fiction, such as accessibility or charm, seem irrelevant, if not quaint, in the face of her wonderfully irritable intelligence."

"The forthcoming collection "Some Trick," by Helen DeWitt, is probably the most recent example."