- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846551714
- ISBN-13: 978-1846551710
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,418,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Housekeeper and the Professor
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More About the Author
Product Description
Paul Auster
Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching.
Synopsis
He is a brilliant maths professor, with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury some seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper with a ten-year-old son, who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them.The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her little boy. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory. "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 where one before did not exist.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Set in Japan, this short novel is the story of a 28 year old housekeeper who goes to work for a former maths professor. She is the 10th housekeeper to be sent by the agency, none of the others having lasted long. He has two characteristics that make him difficult to work for. One is that he is obsessed with maths, talks maths constantly and equates everything in the world to a mathematical formula (he refers to her son as `root" because his flat head reminds the professor of the square root symbol). But more significantly, the professor suffered a head injury 25 years ago that damaged his memory. He can remember everything that happened to him before the accident, but otherwise his memory only lasts 80 minutes. So although she grows increasingly fond of him, she needs to re-introduce herself to him when she arrives each day and their relationship starts anew.
It's an interesting premise and quite a moving story. As she grows fonder of the professor, she also learns to communicate with him in his "language" - ie by relating everything to maths - and to develop a love of maths all of her own.
Ultimately I felt that the story was almost too sparse and could have been further developed, but it's still an endearing book that stays with you after you finish it.
It's an interesting premise and quite a moving story. As she grows fonder of the professor, she also learns to communicate with him in his "language" - ie by relating everything to maths - and to develop a love of maths all of her own.
Ultimately I felt that the story was almost too sparse and could have been further developed, but it's still an endearing book that stays with you after you finish it.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
How do we develop relationships with people? What does our memory mean in these relationships? Is it possible to form a relationship with someone who can not remember that he ever met you even though you see him every day? Yoko Ogawa has written a perfect, poetic story that tries to explore these questions.
The book is written from the point of view of a woman hired to be a housekeeper for a retired math professor. The professor was in a car accident that damaged his brain, destroying his short term memory. Every day she arrives to do her job and the professor has no memory of her ever being there before. When the professor finds out that the housekeeper is a single mom with a young son, he insists that the boy come to his house every day and even though he has no memory of the invitation, the professor is thrilled to see him each day. What brings the three together is the professor's love of mathematics and his ability to share that love along with the love of baseball that they all share.
The result is a simple, beautiful story and at 180 pages, it is long enough to make you think without dragging out the story beyond its need. The author even creates poetry from discussions of prime numbers and Euler's identity. I can strongly recommend this book.
The book is written from the point of view of a woman hired to be a housekeeper for a retired math professor. The professor was in a car accident that damaged his brain, destroying his short term memory. Every day she arrives to do her job and the professor has no memory of her ever being there before. When the professor finds out that the housekeeper is a single mom with a young son, he insists that the boy come to his house every day and even though he has no memory of the invitation, the professor is thrilled to see him each day. What brings the three together is the professor's love of mathematics and his ability to share that love along with the love of baseball that they all share.
The result is a simple, beautiful story and at 180 pages, it is long enough to make you think without dragging out the story beyond its need. The author even creates poetry from discussions of prime numbers and Euler's identity. I can strongly recommend this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This beautiful, haunting novel touched me in ways I can never begin to express or describe. The way I feel towards this book, towards the characters, towards Yoko Ogawa even - it leaves me speechless.
My feelings for the professor in specific will forever exist. The way in which he was depicted, his life before and after the accident, how his brain works, how his emotions are stirred within such a short time-span - we are talking eighty minutes here, that is an hour and twenty minutes.
I read this novel, and I wept. I wept for the professor whose memory only lasts eighty minutes and who adores children. I wept for Root, who quickly became attached to the old man and loved him and cared for him with a maturity way beyond his years. I wept for the Housekeeper, who was always a mother and caretaker at heart. And I even wept for the sister-in-law, whose great, profound love for the professor was never expressed in words - and it never needed to be.
To be able to make me - a reader - feel so strongly towards characters that aren't only fictional, but remained nameless the whole way through, is an incredible accomplishment in itself.
And Yoko Ogawa has proved to be incredible.
What an honour to have read and been made temporarily a part of such amazing people's lives.
This will always remain with me. The memory of a professor who lived with eighty minutes of short-term memory and his lovely housekeeper. The memory of this novel and how it made me feel will definitely last way longer than eighty minutes.
My feelings for the professor in specific will forever exist. The way in which he was depicted, his life before and after the accident, how his brain works, how his emotions are stirred within such a short time-span - we are talking eighty minutes here, that is an hour and twenty minutes.
I read this novel, and I wept. I wept for the professor whose memory only lasts eighty minutes and who adores children. I wept for Root, who quickly became attached to the old man and loved him and cared for him with a maturity way beyond his years. I wept for the Housekeeper, who was always a mother and caretaker at heart. And I even wept for the sister-in-law, whose great, profound love for the professor was never expressed in words - and it never needed to be.
To be able to make me - a reader - feel so strongly towards characters that aren't only fictional, but remained nameless the whole way through, is an incredible accomplishment in itself.
And Yoko Ogawa has proved to be incredible.
What an honour to have read and been made temporarily a part of such amazing people's lives.
This will always remain with me. The memory of a professor who lived with eighty minutes of short-term memory and his lovely housekeeper. The memory of this novel and how it made me feel will definitely last way longer than eighty minutes.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Short and Sweet - the perfect palate cleanser
I've recently been reading either dry non-fiction books or hefty fantasy novels that would probably serve quite well as ballast on ships. Read more
Published 22 days ago by Craig Lam
A nice read, but falls short
Yoko Ogawa has written a novel called The Housekeeper + The Professor. At least that's what it says on the front. On the back it's title replaces the + with "and". Read more
Published 10 months ago by Philip Spires
Warm, short novel about the charms of mathematics
Amazing story about a young single mother of 28, working as a daytime housekeeper, her 10-year old son nicknamed "Root" by her client, a former Professor of Mathematics. Read more
Published 11 months ago by P. A. Doornbos
Rule-based but hauntingly beautiful
This is a sweet and moving novella, based on the rarely expressed truth that human kindness and warmth can transcend every obstacle and is capable of being expressed in the most... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Daniel Park
A Modern Mathmatical Masterpiece
`The Housekeeper and the Professor' is really a tale of two lonely people coming together and it changing their lives forever. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Simon Savidge Reads
Live for the moment - forget everything...
When I spotted this book, with its quote from my literary hero Paul Auster on the cover, I was hooked. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Annabel Gaskell
One of the most beautiful books ever written
This is one of the most beautiful books that I have ever read. It is short, very sweet and elegantly simple. Read more
Published on 12 Oct 2009 by Jane2009
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