The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Genre: (Translated) Adult General Fiction

There is no shortage of stories and literature about amnesiacs. For some reason, memory fascinates authors and readers alike. Perhaps, they think it remarkable that the mind can hold—like files in a cabinet—all the events and faces and facts that make one’s identity so dear and unique. Yet, with something as singular as an accident or a knock to the head, all these memories may disappear—and the files burst their box and fly loose.

Ogawa blends this fragility of memory with the subtlety of building relationships, describing the decay of the mind and the budding of communication in the precise and beautiful language of mathematics.

The ornery Professor lives in eighty-minute chunks, his brain a tape recorder erasing itself after every hour and twenty minutes passes. For him, mathematics is a lifeline, a way to claim some semblance of constancy and familiarity in a world that wildly renews itself eighteen times a day. In fact, numbers are all that’s left for the Professor to trust until the Housekeeper becomes his newest caretaker and brings her son along to keep him company.

In simple language, Ogawa teaches some nifty things about math and illuminates the differences and similarities—and the growing closeless—among these three unlikely characters. You will grow attached to one or all of them.

Rating: Leaves a Lasting Impression