Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Book: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Pages: 180
Finished: January 2010
Challenges:
** New Authors ** Read & Review ** A-Z ** TwentyTen **

This is another one of those books that I have seen on multitudes of blogs being reviewed and and is one I might not ever have picked up to read, if not for the blog world.

It is lovely.
Everything about it is simply lovely:---- the storyline, the characters, the simple prose, the reverence for numbers and math, the concept of being human and treating other people well, the concept of living in the moment--all of it just drew me in and kept me reading. It is not a very long or difficult book, and if you are needing something uplifting to read, this little gem is the book for you. I will definitely be looking for other work by this author and this book will for sure be on my top list for 2010.

"Inevitably, the Professor repeated himself when he talked about prime numbers. But Root and I had promised each other that we would never tell him, even if we had heard the same thing several times before- a promise we took as seriously as our agreement to hide the truth about Enatsu. No matter how weary we were of hearing a story, we always made an effort to listen attentively. We felt we owed that to the Professor, who had put so much effort into treating the two of us as real mathematicians. But our main concern was to avoid confusing him. Any kind of uncertainty caused him pain, so we were determined to hide the time that had passed and the memories he'd lost. Biting our tongues was the least we could do." Page 61

From Publisher's Weekly:
Ogawa (The Diving Pool) weaves a poignant tale of beauty, heart and sorrow in her exquisite new novel. Narrated by the Housekeeper, the characters are known only as the Professor and Root, the Housekeepers 10-year-old son, nicknamed by the Professor because the shape of his hair and head remind the Professor of the square root symbol. A brilliant mathematician, the Professor was seriously injured in a car accident and his short-term memory only lasts for 80 minutes. He can remember his theorems and favorite baseball players, but the Housekeeper must reintroduce herself every morning, sometimes several times a day. The Professor, who adores Root, is able to connect with the child through baseball, and the Housekeeper learns how to work with him through the memory lapses until they can come together on common ground, at least for 80 minutes. In this gorgeous tale, Ogawa lifts the window shade to allow readers to observe the characters for a short while, then closes the shade.