He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem–ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper–with a ten-year-old son–who is hired to care for the Professor. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between … blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities–like the Housekeeper’s shoe size–and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away. Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.
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The Housekeeper and the Professor caught my eye in an airport bookstore recently for one reason and one reason only: it is a Japanese novel, and I was on my way to Japan.
Unlike other Japanese fiction I have read (for example, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage or A Tale for the Time Being), it is infused with a sense of the …
One of my favorite things about going to independent bookstores is that they will surely stock and feature books that I might never find in big box stores. The Housekeeper and the Professor is one such offering, found in a recent trip to Owl and Turtle in Camden, Maine. (I can always count on O&T to have selections that are new to me.)
This is a …
The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa is my first read for Women in Translation Month 2020. It is the story of a single parent housekeeper and her relationship with a former mathematics professor that can not take care of himself after a serious accident a few years prior. The housekeeper has a ten-year-old son named Root that develops …
This is one of the best books I’ve read recently. The premise is so unique and it’s beautifully written. The characters are rich and memorable. I highly recommend it.
This sweet story is punctuated by charming bits of both math and baseball so, holy cow, how can a writer go wrong with that? A housekeeper is assigned to look after a college professor whose memory is impaired down to a limit of eighty minutes, and yet his mind is wonderfully filled with fascinating ideas from the world of mathematics. Anyone …
This was quite an unusual little book about the relationship between the two main characters. Written rather sparsely, the author still managed to convey the hearts of the characters.
a wonderful, magical novel. i have given copies to all the math teachers i know.
A heartwarming story of a woman taking care of an elderly man who is not related to her but they end up caring for each other as family. A very sweet story
The Professor is someone I knew…the housekeeper and her son are characters I wish I knew! I enjoyed their shared love for numbers. The ending was indeed a surprise! It can easily be labeled Uplifting and Tragic!
This is a love story of mathematics. I have always loved numbers, here they are a main character. One of a kind.
Dementia is one thing but memory loss of that nature is tragic. There are people who care and can see beyond and act on their compassion. Inspirational
Such a lovely story about the power of relationships. You will learn some new things about math, but don’t get phobic about it, and miss this wonderful book.
This book had interesting characters put in an unusual situation.