REVIEW: The Housekeeper and the Professor (Yoko Ogawa)

Book: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Author: Yoko Ogawa

My rating: 4/5.

Premise: A young Housekeeper is hired to care for a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he only has eighty minutes of short-term memory. Every morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew. Though he cannot hold new memories for long, 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.

This was a beautiful book. The story is told by the housekeeper as she and her son befriend the professor. I loved how the author writes about maths. She personifies numbers and operations, making the maths come alive. There is a bit of maths explained by the professor, but the concepts aren't complex and are explained clearly (I know I'm a mathematician myself, but trust me). Obviously, there is a sadness in this story. You can't help but mourn the person the professor was and want to give him a hug whenever he gets upset. A touching and gorgeous book.