Review: The Samurai's Octopus

What if … Charles Dickens were not a name synonymous with Victorian London, but were transplanted instead to 18 th century Edo (Tokyo)? You might wind up with something like Jonelle Patrick’s triumphant new novel, The Samurai’s Octopus. It’s not written in Dickens’s style of course. Patrick’s style is all her own, lucid and sharp-edged as Japanese calligraphy. But it’s Dickensian in subject…