SOURCE: "Samurai on the Run," in The New York Times Book Review, September 9, 1990, p. 13.

Godwin is an American novelist, short story writer, and critic. In the following review, she praises Boyle's "virtuoso language" and "cross-cultural insights" in East Is East.

This irresistible novel is T. Coraghessan Boyle's finest yet. It has the vital language and inventiveness of plot that we have come to expect from him, but this time there is a keener focus of intention, a more profound level of empathy than were evident in his previous novels—even the ambitious and highly imaginative World's End, which won the 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

A simple plot description of East Is East makes the novel sound like the mere high jinks of a clever writer: a young Japanese seaman jumps ship off the coast of Georgia and, through a series of mishaps and cultural misuderstandings, finds himself...