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The Housekeeper and the Professor

Yōko Ogawa,

Stephen Snyder (Translator)

3.98 · Rating details · 33,956 ratings · 5,475 reviews

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 him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship bl ...more

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Paperback, 180 pages

Published February 3rd 2009 by Picador (first published August 2003)

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Feb 07, 2017 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing

Shelves: japanese, philosophy-theology, favourites, science, mathematics

Life by the Numbers

Numbers are everywhere - Real, Natural, Imaginary, Perfect, Amicable, Abundant, Deficient, Triangular, Prime (including both Mersenne and Pernicious as well as Twins) to name a few. And they're all here in The Housekeeper and the Professor, which Ms. Ogawa wrote in 2007. The Professor is of mathematics and has amnesia; the housekeeper is devoted and has a son. This melange constitutes the cast of a charming story of mathematics and love, subjects with a connection that is less ...more

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Mar 18, 2017 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, japan, baseball

Happy Cubs opening day! 2018 has not been the reading year I had planned on so far. Real life and the stress that goes with it have gotten in the way of being able to focus on reading. Hopefully that changes. In the meantime in honor of the Cubs first home game this year, I am reposting my favorite baseball book from last year, a lovely novella that I am fortunate did not fly under my radar. The Housekeeper and the Professor was recommended to me by my Goodreads' friend Diane because she knows t Happy Cubs opening day! 2018 has not been the reading year I had planned on so far. Real life and the stress that goes with it have gotten in the way of being able to focus on reading. Hopefully that changes. In the meantime in honor of the Cubs first home game this year, I am reposting my favorite baseball book from last year, a lovely novella that I am fortunate did not fly under my radar. The Housekeeper and the Professor was recommended to me by my Goodreads' friend Diane because she knows that I love baseball. This March, Japan is participating in the World Baseball Classic so I found this slim novel to be a reminder that America’s pastime is now played happily all over the world.

Yoko Ogawa has been a leading Japanese novelist for twenty years. In this touching story, she creates a family out of a housekeeper, her ten year old son, and the math professor whose cottage they were asked to tend to. The Professor is a math genius, but seventeen years prior to the events of this novel he suffered brain trauma in an accident. As a result his short term memory is only 80 minutes long, and he clips notes to his suit in order to remember important information. Fortunately, the math theorems for which he earned a PhD and many honors as well as his ability to teach them remain intact. Yet, despite this brilliant mind, he is unable to care for himself because of the memory loss and requires a full time Housekeeper to assist him at home. His sister would rather that he not have a housekeeper, however, because she believes that she can care for him herself. She does not exhibit any love toward her brother and makes his condition out to be worse than it is so that no person is willing to fill the position.

It takes a special person to care for those with memory loss. I have seen that first hand in my life. The Housekeeper is a single mother. She is the first Housekeeper who stayed with the Professor for more than one day because she overlooked his 80 minute memory loop. Rather, she embraced learning abstract mathematical concepts such as amicable numbers, perfect numbers, and the professor's love for prime numbers. When he finds out that she is a working mother, he insists that she brings her son to work. What ensues is a touching relationship between the Professor and ten year old Root. Ogawa is able to bridge the gap between the most unlikely of friends by writing about numbers as the universal language. The Professor says that G-D made numbers before people, and the proofs were always there waiting to be discovered. She inserts actual mathematical proofs rather than writing about them, which both speeds up the novel, and allows the Housekeeper to know the Professor on his level.

This gap is also bridged by Root and the Professor's shared love of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. As a multigenerational fan of the same team, I have seen first hand how baseball is more than a game but a love shared by families. This is evident as the professor fixes his radio so that Root can listen to games, and together they follow the Tigers on their drive toward the pennant. Because baseball is a game of numbers, Ogawa includes statistics and probability in order to show that the Professor loves the game as much as children do. What touched me the most coincidentally is the Professor’s love of the number 28 because to him it is a perfect number that was worn by his favorite Tigers’ pitcher in the days when his memory was lucid enough to remember him pitching a no hitter. Today, our favorite Cubs’ pitcher wears number 28. He is a control pitcher who is capable of pitching a no hitter every time out and attended Dartmouth of the Ivy League. His nickname: The Professor.

Being a mother of a boy close in age to Root who loves both baseball and math as well as one who has seen older family members succumb to memory loss, I felt like I could relate to the characters in this story. In her last years, my grandmother could not remember how old I was or how many kids I had or that I had kids at all, but if I mentioned Ernie Banks, her eyes lit up. Thus, I was moved by the relationship of the three characters in this slim novel, and enjoyed trying to solve the math proofs along with the housekeeper and hoped upon hope that the professor’s dementia would improve even though from experience I knew it would not. Ogawa is a new author for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed this story that brings together an untraditional family who is drawn to the beauty of the numbers of baseball.

5 star ⚾️ 👨‍🏫 🔢 🇯🇵 read ...more

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Apr 23, 2020 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it

Shelves: single-mothers, japanese-authors, mathematics

The story is set in Japan. A housekeeper is hired to clean and cook for an elderly former mathematics professor who suffered a brain injury. (He’s 64 – is that elderly? lol) He can only remember new things for 80 minutes. So each day when she arrives at his house she has to re-introduce herself. Every day he asks her some numerical question ranging from her birthday to her shoe size and he expounds about some unique aspect of the numbers of her response. Over time, of course, he asks her the sam The story is set in Japan. A housekeeper is hired to clean and cook for an elderly former mathematics professor who suffered a brain injury. (He’s 64 – is that elderly? lol) He can only remember new things for 80 minutes. So each day when she arrives at his house she has to re-introduce herself. Every day he asks her some numerical question ranging from her birthday to her shoe size and he expounds about some unique aspect of the numbers of her response. Over time, of course, he asks her the same questions numerous times.

description

When he finds out that she has a ten-year old boy who is a latch-key kid waiting at home for her, he insists that she let the boy come over after school. So the boy and the woman start learning math. We learn quite a bit about simple math in the process – things like prime numbers and amicable numbers. And I probably shouldn’t say ‘simple’ math – I should say ‘easily understandable’ math the way it is presented. (The Wikipedia review of the book has a list of a dozen math concepts talked about in the book.)

What we also learn is that, although the professor’s presumption is that he is teaching the boy, the housekeeper is fascinated by the subject and she is good at math. As we learn her story - single mom, only child of another single mom - it’s unfortunate she had to drop out to start working full-time before finishing high school. She’s better at solving math problems than her bright son is.

The professor and the boy are also fascinated by baseball stats. The professor still thinks his favorite baseball team has the same players it had in 1975 when he suffered his injury. She takes them both to a baseball game – neither has ever been. Little by little they basically become a family.

Interest is added to the story by the professor’s quirks, and he has plenty. She’s the ninth housekeeper her agency has sent recently – the others quit or were removed. There’s also a mystery she solves about the relationship between the professor and his widowed sister-in-law. The professor lives in isolation in a cottage behind his sister-in-law’s house and they seem to have no interaction. But the sister-in-law keeps him functioning and hires and fires the housekeepers.

The housekeeper runs afoul of the agency regulations several times and is even fired at one point. The sister-in-law can’t understand why anyone wants anything to do with her crazy brother-in-law and starts to think the housekeeper is after his money. Because the housekeeper and the sister-in-law don’t interact, the housekeeper has to solve the mystery of the professor’s injury on her own.

description

It’s a good story and the way the math is presented is fun, so that shouldn’t deter anyone from reading the book. The author (b. 1962) is a prolific writer with about 30 works of fiction. This book was made into a film in Japan with the title The Professor's Beloved Equation. This book and The Memory Police are probably her two best-known works in English.

Photo of a Japanese cottage from merrimackdesign.com
The author from pen-online.com

...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Sue rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, japan, read-in-2012, plan-to-re-read, literary-fiction

On originally reading a description of this novel I wondered if it was really for me. Did I want to read about a Professor with a memory span of 80 minutes and the Housekeeper who assists him? I'm so glad I decided to read it and I'm happy to have my own copy. This story of memory, math, building a pseudo-family where no relationship has existed before is full of love and compassion. The emotions are mostly expressed in mathematical theorems, cooking and random touch, but it is palpable througho ...more

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Jan 23, 2018 Lori rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Amicable numbers – pair of keyrings Nerd Romance (https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/amic...)

Not that kind of love story, but a sad, sweet story about an unlikely friendship between a brilliant mathematician, his housekeeper and her son. There is love just no romance.

The Professor is 64 years old. He suffered a brain injury at age 47. He has an 80-minute retention for new memories ever since his accident. He covers his suit in notes to remember new information. He loves math, numbers, children an ...more

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Oct 02, 2020 Robin rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020, novella, japan, literary-fiction, translation

In comparison with Ogawa's The Memory Police and Hotel Iris, this story is particularly gentle and sweet. Naturally, that means it didn't grab me by the neck like her other work. But it did have its way of getting in and tugging those heartstrings.

This is a short novel about a woman (the housekeeper) who comes to care for her employer (the professor), who is a mathematical genius, but who also has a very limited short term memory (80 minutes).

Because he starts fresh every 80 minutes, the present ...more

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Aug 13, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, 21th-century, culture, japan, literature

博士の愛した数式 = Hakase no ai Shita Suushiki = The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yōko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a novel by Yōko Ogawa set in modern-day Japan. It was published in August 2003.

The story centers around a mathematician, "the Professor," who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident in 1975 and since then can produce only 80 minutes' worth of memories, and his interactions with a housekeeper (the narrator) and her son "Root" as the Professor shares the beauty of equati 博士の愛した数式 = Hakase no ai Shita Suushiki = The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yōko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a novel by Yōko Ogawa set in modern-day Japan. It was published in August 2003.

The story centers around a mathematician, "the Professor," who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident in 1975 and since then can produce only 80 minutes' worth of memories, and his interactions with a housekeeper (the narrator) and her son "Root" as the Professor shares the beauty of equations with them.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه آگوست سال 2014 میلادی

عنوان: خدمتکار و پروفسور؛ نویسنده: یوکو اگاوا؛ مترجم: کیهان بهمنی‏‫؛ تهران: آموت‏‫، ‏‫1391؛ ‬‬در 248ص؛ شابک 9786006605173؛ چاپ دوم تا چهارم 1392؛ چاپ پنجم 1394؛ ششم تا هشتم 1395؛ نهم و دهم 1396؛ یازدهم 1397؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ژاپنی - سده 21م

عنوان: خدمتکار و پروفسور؛ نویسنده: یوکو اگاوا؛ مترجم: شقایق نظر‌زاده‏‫؛ ویراستار حسین گودرزی؛ تهران کتاب نشر نیکا‏‫، ‬‬در 183ص؛

داستان از زبان «خدمتکار» روایت می‌شود.؛ او و پسرش «جـَـذر» مواظبت از «پروفسور» را برعهده دارند.؛ «جذر» نام واقعی پسرک نیست؛ این اسم را پروفسور روی پسربچه گذاشته، چون موهایش او را به یاد علامت رادیکال می‌اندازد.؛ پروفسور در یک تصادف بشدت آسیب دیده، و به همین خاطر حافظهه ی کوتاه‌ مدتش بیشتر از هشتاد دقیقه یادمانها و اطلاعات را در خود نگهداری نمی‌کند.؛ او تئوری‌های پیچیده ریاضی، یا نام بازیکنان محبوب بیس‌بال‌ خویش را به خوبی به یاد دارد، اما خدمتکار ناچار است، هر روز صبح که کارش را آغاز می‌کند، خود را به او معرفی کند.؛ گاهی برخی روزها حتی بیش از یکبار باید خود را معرفی کند.؛ برای وضعیت پروفسور، خدمتکار تلاش می‌کند، تا راه‌هایی بیابد تا بتواند با او به بهترین وجه کنار بیاید و کارش را انجام دهد.؛ حتی شده برای هشتاد دقیقه.؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 29/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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May 30, 2012 Cecily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: miscellaneous-fiction, family-parenting, china-japan-asia, solitary-protagonist, ageing-and-old-age

An enjoyable Japanese novel that scatters numbers, and facts about the brain, though it's primarily about friendship. It feels light, but prompts profound questions.

The sit

The eponymous housekeeper is a young single mother (herself the only child of a single mother) with a ten-year-old son. She becomes daily housekeeper to a former maths professor whose head injury in 1975 means he only remembers the most recent 80 minutes, plus things before 1975, nearly 20 years before the story is set (~1992) ...more

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Jan 15, 2018 PorshaJo rated it really liked it

Shelves: challengereads, audio, challengereads-2018, culture-japanese

A wonderful, heart-warming story about unlikely friendships....and math...and baseball! I decided to grab this one for my Japanese reading challenge for 2018 and it was the perfect story to begin reading. It's heavy into math, which I must say, I'm a bit rusty on. I was at one time fascinated by numbers, going to the highest level of math courses in college, and working for my college math professor. But then...I just lost interest in numbers (as along came computers! Nerd!)

The story is of the f ...more

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Feb 05, 2017 Agnieszka rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-a-copy, ebook, 2017, reviewed, read-more-women, japan, ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a charming and enjoyable novella about eponymous Professor of mathematics who due to accident years earlier suffers from peculiar form of amnesia and while he remembers everything from the past his current memory lasts only eighty minutes, and as a reminder of this fact he has fitting note pinned to his suit. In fact Professor has plenty notes on him that rustle when he walks. It also is a story about his housekeeper, young single mother and her son named b
The Housekeeper and the Professor is a charming and enjoyable novella about eponymous Professor of mathematics who due to accident years earlier suffers from peculiar form of amnesia and while he remembers everything from the past his current memory lasts only eighty minutes, and as a reminder of this fact he has fitting note pinned to his suit. In fact Professor has plenty notes on him that rustle when he walks. It also is a story about his housekeeper, young single mother and her son named by Professor, in honor of root sign since his head is flat, Root. And finally the story revolves about numbers, whole range of numbers. Prime, natural, amicable, perfect, triangular and so on.

Well, being myself mathematical dimwit I didn’t think reading about equations, proofs and Fermat Last Theorem could be so engaging. For Professor numbers are comforting and solving some mathematical puzzle leaves him peaceful and at ease. And these passages devoted to the beauty of mathematics I found especially captivating. In mathematics is order and logic that I admire and mystery and beauty that regretfully I not always can comprehend.

You could think that being limited to the world of numbers only the Professor is excluded from the outside world. Yes, in some way he is. He lives in unkempt cottage, his clothes remember better times and he barely leaves his refuge. But he almost immediately creates a bond with his housekeeper’s ten years old son. And reading about their relationship, the way he cares about the boy is such heart-warming even if every time Professor has to start his day looking at his clothes to find a proper note reminding him who the boy and his mother are.

Yōko Ogawa wrote this story with elegance and understanding, fortunately avoiding saccharine undertone that can be found in some novels concerning disabilities issue. We can see Professor in his best and worst moments. We see old man in shabby clothes who pays no attention to his dowdiness and hygienic matters. We see him thinking and pointing at the sky to indicate the evening star that is about to show. We perfectly understand his fear of crowded places and can comprehend the fact when he reduces baseball game to numbers and statistics or writes a formula to end an arguing. Because numbers always would give him sense of order and harmony with himself and the world.

3.5/5 ...more

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Apr 12, 2017 Margitte rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, 2017-read, fiction, japan

With only 192 pages, it is a breeze. A delightful pause. A little gem of fantasmagoric proportions. An ode to maths. And a Dennis The Menace- moment in nostalgia.

The Dennis The Menace-moment.(view spoiler) With only 192 pages, it is a breeze. A delightful pause. A little gem of fantasmagoric proportions. An ode to maths. And a Dennis The Menace- moment in nostalgia.

The Dennis The Menace-moment.(view spoiler)

Reading this book, about a housekeeper and her little son, and a brilliant mentally-disabled professor after a severe head injury, brought the joy of numbers back. Every eighty minutes his short term memory erased itself, but he still had his memories of elegant equations from the past. The housekeeper and her son had to introduce themselves each day all over again. The professor called her son 'Root', because, he said, the flat top of the boy's head reminded him of the square root sign. Very soon the professor managed to instill a love of maths in the little boy (rekindle it in me as well!), and brought the magic of this ancient old knowledge alive.

The professor believed that the very origins of the universe could be explained in the exact language of numbers. It was like copying truths from God's notebook.

A bond of friendship formed when they managed to get the old radio working again and baseball broadcasts could reverberate through the small garden cottage. He became a surrogate father to the boy child, while layers of silence were slowly lifted. It did not matter if they got the answers wrong to his math problems. He preferred their wild, desperate guesses to silence.

Curious equations created an unlikely family where one was desperately needed.

Written as a fictional memoir. It feels so real, so true. So very very good.

RECOMMENDED. ...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

This is a beautifully-written, elegant little book about an old man, a maths professor, his housekeeper and her young son. The professor's memory post-1975 is only 80 minutes long, so everything is fresh and new to him all the time, including the news his memory is only 80 minutes long. The housekeeper has her own problems but finds fulfillment in the relationship, ever renewed, between her son and the professor and her growing love for mathematics. It is a mark of the author's writing that the ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read2017, around-the-world, location-japan, translated, women-in-translation

Everyone and their mother read this last year for Women in Translation month (August 2016), and I remember finding my own copy at the annual literacy book sale. I set it aside for WIT month this year and was happy to pull it back out.

The housekeeper is a single parent, trying to make enough to live on, and the professor is a mathematician with a failing memory. The story is about connection and care but also MATH and anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for math. The professor can't remember p ...more

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Sep 13, 2020 Anne rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio, asia, fiction, 2020

A poignant and touching story about a very special housekeeper with qualities of empathy, gentleness and kindness without which this would be a very different story. This housekeeper cares for a math professor who has a brain injury from an accident and, as a result, only has 80 minutes of short term memory. Ten housekeepers prior to our angelic one have failed with him. But the housekeeper in the story shares and gives all that she has to comfort and care for the professor, including her son. A ...more

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Sep 24, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, borrowed-from-library, asia

Math has never liked me, and if you make me sit through an entire baseball game, I cry. So how is it that I am about to tell you that a book that is largely concerned with math and baseball has captured my heart? Yoko Ogawa has convinced me, without really trying, that math is beautiful, in a way my college algebra teacher was unable to.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can i ...more

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Sep 08, 2013 Kelly rated it liked it

Shelves: 21st-century, fiction, examined-lives, identity-crisis, its-the-quiet-ones, owned

A highly polished, smooth, shining surface of a novel that was exquisitely crafted from start to finish. The voice was so understated and matter-of-fact that I would have had little trouble believing that this was an actual account of a real housekeeper remembering her experiences. There were very few authorial flourishes and all of them were appropriately put into the mouth of the strange, afflicted Professor, a math genius whose short-term memory only lasts 80 minutes.

A premise like that can b ...more

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Sep 22, 2018 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, coming-of-age, japan, baseball, disabilities, mathematics

This tale charms us with the friendship that develops between a young housekeeper and her 12-year old son with an elderly recluse and former mathematics professor. Though he can’t retain new memories beyond 80 minutes, his 50-plus years of skills developed as a mathematician prior to the accident and brain damage that disabled him are still accessible to him. These skills he creatively puts to use each day trying to figure out and live in whatever social world of people falls his way as if anew. This tale charms us with the friendship that develops between a young housekeeper and her 12-year old son with an elderly recluse and former mathematics professor. Though he can’t retain new memories beyond 80 minutes, his 50-plus years of skills developed as a mathematician prior to the accident and brain damage that disabled him are still accessible to him. These skills he creatively puts to use each day trying to figure out and live in whatever social world of people falls his way as if anew. The “Housekeeper” (the only name we have for our narrator) learns how to promote continuity with the self-absorbed and fragile octogenarian by pinning to his shirt to see each morning a drawing of herself and a square-root symbol for her son (who becomes “Root” because of his flat head). It felt brilliant how Ogawa’s three characters formed a fruitful virtual family despite all the challenges of the old man’s memory problems.

The Professor has outlived any friends and family he might have had, and his one limited family member is a daughter-in-law who provides his apartment and hires housekeepers told to handle all problems themselves. Thus, the Housekeeper understands how she is his only human connection, and her kind nature leads her open whatever doors to his heart can be opened. His main occupation during the day is solving math puzzles posed by certain journals, a task that can build each day on his own written proofs and series of equations from the day before. His use of math as a timeless way to query and grasp the world becomes quite a revelation to her. She even gets inspired enough to work on math puzzles herself during pauses in her day, driven by the sense of wonderful truths about reality are there to be discovered.

The reader needs no facility with math to appreciate the hold of mathematical thinking on the characters (i.e. as was true of “The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime” and “The Beautiful Mind”). For example, The Professor likes to ask the Housekeeper what her birthday is or some other quantity question and then identify amazing mathematical properties of the number, such as it being a “Perfect Number” (one equal to the sum of its factors) or a special kind of Prime number (one that has no factors but one and itself). The Professor takes special pleasure in treating her son to tales of the wonders of numbers, such as the weird features of Imaginary numbers (one based on the square root of a negative number). The Housekeeper breaks the rules of her agency by bringing Root to her job each day after his school, as the pleasures of her son’s bond with the Professor clearly enhances the quality of both their lives. The fatherless boy gets beneficent wisdom from an adult stand-in and learns the empathetic ability to protect him from the pain of learning out of synch his memories are with the present world. For example, they share the common pleasures of a favorite baseball team’s successes, but Root makes up a story for why the Professor’s hero of the 50s is not in the games they share.

A read of this book provides some of the same rewards of cross-generational friendships and collisions of the serious and the comic that are common in the work of Fred Backman. On top of the fuzzy warmth of experiencing the breaking down of barriers between people, this novel adds an artful layer of mathematics played out as a language that can mediate the kind of human connections and framework for reality that all of us need to fully live in this lonely life.

As a sample of the frequent zest of math applied to life, here the Housekeeper is tending the Professor when he is sick and she is realizing how fragile he is:
I remembered something the Professor told me, something a mathematician with a difficult name once said: “Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.” The Professor’s body had been consumed by the devil of mathematics.
...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Dem rated it liked it

3.5 Star

The Housekeeper + The Professor by Yoko Ogawa is a heart-warming story about a housekeeper, a professor and the housekeeper’s ten year old son but also and most importantly a story about what it means to live in the present, and about friendships, family and respect and a little Math thrown in for good measure.

"He is a brilliant maths professor who lives with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive and astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him"

T ...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Trish rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, character-driven

This is a quietly wonderful book. When I was reading it I really liked it. Now that some time has passed I still think of it, and any book that I still remember months after reading is a book that deserves 5 stars. Although there is some advanced math in the story the author doesn't expect the reader to understand all of it. The numbers and math are used more to show the magic of numbers and how math brings an unlikely group of people together to form meaningful relationships.
This is a characte ...more

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Mar 15, 2020 Loretta rated it really liked it

Shelves: march-2020, fiction, my-2020-reading-challenge

Needed a few days to gather my thoughts on this book. The end result of the the few days brought me clarity. What a wonderful, simplistic narrative of a true friendship. What a beautiful, heartfelt book! One that everyone should read! 😥

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Aug 12, 2019 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: in-translation, literary-fiction, east-asia, 2019, wit, novellas

My only experience with Yoko Ogawa before now was her terrific short story collection Revenge, and though I'd heard that all of her books are drastically different from one another, I think I still expected to see a bit of Revenge's dark and macabre tone here. Instead, The Housekeeper and the Professor is utterly and unapologetically charming.

It focuses on the relationship between a housekeeper, her son, and a man whose house she's assigned to by her agency, who she refers to only as 'the Profes My only experience with Yoko Ogawa before now was her terrific short story collection Revenge, and though I'd heard that all of her books are drastically different from one another, I think I still expected to see a bit of Revenge's dark and macabre tone here. Instead, The Housekeeper and the Professor is utterly and unapologetically charming.

It focuses on the relationship between a housekeeper, her son, and a man whose house she's assigned to by her agency, who she refers to only as 'the Professor.' The Professor has a condition which prevents him from creating new memories - his memory lasts only 80 minutes. He is nevertheless a brilliant man, and the likewise unnamed protagonist becomes increasingly spellbound by his unsolicited mathematical lectures.

There are any number of reasons why this book shouldn't have worked for me; it's sweet in tone, it's about math, it's about baseball. I don't like any of these things. However, this book's passion is positively infectious; this was like listening to a friend tell a story about something they love which you don't particularly care about - sometimes regardless of the content, the enthusiasm itself is contagious. Also, I will say that this book helped me understand the sentiment that 'math is like poetry,' that I've heard a few times throughout my life, better than anything else ever has. No matter how many times I've witnessed an individual's passion for math, it's always seemed to me like this cold and rigid thing, but The Professor's perspective on the relationship between numbers, and the solace he takes in their familiarity, really moved me.

But beyond the math and baseball, what makes this quirky book near-universally appealing is the unconventional, infinitely touching relationship between the two titular characters. The Housekeeper and the Professor is about empathy; it's a testament to the unexpected possibilities of human connection. I just found this book to be a joy to read - quiet and subtle and nostalgic and affecting. Very highly recommended. ...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Connie G rated it really liked it

Shelves: re-reads, asia, japan, mathematics

This is a lovely story where kindness turns unrelated people into a family. The Housekeeper is hired to cook and keep house for a Professor of mathematics who had a traumatic brain injury after a car accident. Although the Professor can remember events that happened before the TBI, this injury resulted in his short-term memory lasting only eighty minutes. It seems like they are meeting for the first time every day.

The Housekeeper and her ten year old son interact quite well with the professor s ...more

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Jan 17, 2020 Pedro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Had I known at the time that “mistakes were often as revealing as the right answer” and I probably wouldn’t have been such a lousy maths student. Well, to be fair I was beyond lousy. I was literally a numerical disaster waiting to happen. I can still remember the teacher’s face after I had given an answer to a problem as if it happened yesterday. I can still feel my face burning the way it did every time I was called to the blackboard to solve an equation.

Till this day I honestly don’t know if ...more

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Apr 29, 2009 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, kirkus, relationships, text-checked, japan

This book is truly original, not your normal run of the mill. I highly recommend it. What is it about? It is about friendship and the beauty of numbers and baseball. And more..... Where should I start? I will start with the numbers. This is sort of the easiest to expalin. This book made me see and feel the beauty of math, of the laws that govern numbers. The world is so complicated. We understand nothing. Everything is always changing, but then you learn of a mathematical formula that is constan This book is truly original, not your normal run of the mill. I highly recommend it. What is it about? It is about friendship and the beauty of numbers and baseball. And more..... Where should I start? I will start with the numbers. This is sort of the easiest to expalin. This book made me see and feel the beauty of math, of the laws that govern numbers. The world is so complicated. We understand nothing. Everything is always changing, but then you learn of a mathematical formula that is constant, that is always true, and suddenly there is an order to the messy world around us. The author goes even one step beyond this. Three people, of which two are completely normal like you and me, the housekeeper and her son, come to understand the magic of numbers through their contact with the Professor (of math). I wish I had had had a math teacher like te Professor! Did you know that zero is a concept thought up by an Indian mathematician. Before him the Greeks thought this concept didn't need a symbol. You get history, and then the author pulls the mathematical concept into the story so you understand the true consequence of the concept. What it means to you and me. Infinity, a line, zero, amicable numbers. Honestly, math is made beautiful. Occasionaly, I was too tired to follow the full development of a formula, but usually the author never pushed the theoretical underpinings too far. It is definitely worth reading the book just so that you will learn about math, but there is more!

There is baseball. And there is true friendship. And there is a look at how people come to love each other simply by doing things together. Caring for each other. All the blurbs about this book tell you that the housekeeper is taking care of an elderly man who can only remember what has happened during the last 80 minutes. He can also remember everything before 1975, before a car accident. What does this lack if remembrance really mean? It means that every day when she and her son come to his door he doesn't know who they are. It means that when you spend a wonderful afternoon together, it is gone tomorrow. So are the frightful disagreements that can destroy a day. Gone - they never happened! What does this say to the reader? What's the lesson to be learned? You get a beautiful picture of a frail old man, who has three suits - one for winter, one for summer and one for the spring and fall. That is what he wears. He has little pieces of paper pinned all over his suit to remind himeslf of things he must remember. Soon he is not a man dressed in a suit, but a man dressed in fragments of paper. The image is beautiful and clear and wonderful. Why? Bcause you fall in love with the guy! What develops for realationship between these three people is extraordinary. Do you see why I say this book is original? It is NOT melodramatic, it is quiet and beautiful. Heartwarming - definitely. Read it. It's only 180 pages. Take time to read chapter 10, of the eleven chapters in the book, slowly. Savour it. It is so beautiful.

12 pages in and I already love the characters, the housekeeper and the professor! Why is that? Perhaps b/c they are each true to their own selves. They are not what society wants them to be but merely who they were born to be. I cannot help but compare this with the poor souls of Remarkable Creatures. Although both Elizabeth and Mary also followed their inclinations, they spent all their time judging themselves by the moral standards of their times. The housekeeper and the professor are too busy being themselves. ...more

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Feb 03, 2015 Teresa rated it really liked it

3.5

After our first full day visiting Japan in 2011, I saw a baseball game on TV (had to be a replay because it was December): the Yakult Swallows versus the Hanshin Tigers. I recognized Matt Murton of the Tigers who'd briefly played for the Chicago Cubs and the name of the 40-year-old Miyamoto. Two evenings later, in Nara, we got caught up in a small parade on the main street and as it ended, a young man straddling a bicycle caught up with us to ask if we were Americans and, next, if we knew Ame 3.5

After our first full day visiting Japan in 2011, I saw a baseball game on TV (had to be a replay because it was December): the Yakult Swallows versus the Hanshin Tigers. I recognized Matt Murton of the Tigers who'd briefly played for the Chicago Cubs and the name of the 40-year-old Miyamoto. Two evenings later, in Nara, we got caught up in a small parade on the main street and as it ended, a young man straddling a bicycle caught up with us to ask if we were Americans and, next, if we knew American baseball. When I asked if he knew American baseball, his response was "of course". (I soon understood his "of course" simply meant "yes".) His favorite Japanese team was the Hanshin Tigers, so I mentioned Murton, and he gave some other names of Americans playing in Japan. I mentioned Fukudome* (who was then playing for the Cubs) and he countered with Sammy Sosa! The young man walked with us to the hotel where we said good-bye, and he seemed reluctant to part.

I bring this up not only because in this book the Hanshin Tigers are the favorite team of the professor and the son of the housekeeper; but because baseball (along with mathematics) is the way the housekeeper and her son communicate with the professor. I don't speak Japanese and the young man's English was limited, yet we communicated -- and quite satisfactorily -- through the names of baseball players.

This book is very different from the other works of Ogawa that have been translated into English. Anyone reading this first and then the others might be in for a shock. And while I prefer her Revenge and The Diving Pool, her narratorial choice here (as usual) is intriguing. The housekeeper tells us nothing of how hard and lonely her own life must be, as if to point out how little she knows of the professor's feelings. She never questions the giving of friendship to a man who will have no memory of it eighty minutes later. The professor may live in a sort of bubble, but surely the housekeeper doesn't, though that is what she presents to us. Because of these choices, on the surface the story might seem mostly a sweet one (and it is, though it's never saccharine) but I can't help sense the sadness that lurks beneath.

* I googled Fukudome to see where he is playing now, and had to smile ... the Hanshin Tigers. ...more

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Sep 09, 2017 Laysee rated it really liked it

Recommended to Laysee by: Tsung

Imagine going to work and having to introduce yourself afresh to your employer every day. Will it drive you crazy if the first question you had to answer at the door each day is “What’s your shoe size?” ?

A housekeeper, a single mother with a 10-year-old son, finds herself at the cottage of a 64-year-old Math professor who has had nine housekeepers before her. She expects a difficult client, but what she least expects is an affection that develops into a strong friendship.

The Professor suffered a Imagine going to work and having to introduce yourself afresh to your employer every day. Will it drive you crazy if the first question you had to answer at the door each day is “What’s your shoe size?” ?

A housekeeper, a single mother with a 10-year-old son, finds herself at the cottage of a 64-year-old Math professor who has had nine housekeepers before her. She expects a difficult client, but what she least expects is an affection that develops into a strong friendship.

The Professor suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident 17 years ago in 1975 that left his memory in shreds. He is unable to remember anything new and his memory lasts precisely 80 minutes. Mercifully, he lives in the world of numbers and that remains intact. I cannot fathom what it must be like to wake up each day and have to start all over again to make sense of the environment. Ogawa tells us that "…he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort." He does not remember the housekeeper from one day to the next. However, they can always discuss one thing without worry – Mathematics.

What I found loveliest is the gradual and steady flowering of the relationship between the Professor, the housekeeper, and her son, Root (a name fondly given by the Professor who delights in mussing the hair on the boy’s flat head). The Professor tells Root, "The square root sign is a generous symbol, it gives shelter to all the numbers." How wonderful!

The housekeeper goes beyond the call of duty to make the Professor’s daily living as stable as possible. She enlarges his world beyond the office where he does his "thinking". The Professor imparts to the housekeeper, Root, and me (the reluctant Math student) the Mathematical secrets hidden in “god’s notebook”. I learned about amicable numbers, perfect numbers, and Euler’s formula. To the Professor, "..explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why stars are beautiful." He teaches this beauty with incredible patience, enthusiasm, and humility. I found delight in this Math palindrome – “I prefer pi”. I would have loved a Math teacher/professor like him. But what moved me most is the Professor’s genuine love for Root that is eloquently expressed despite his frailty and vulnerability.

Read The Housekeeper and the Professor. How immeasurably priceless it is that a person may lose his brain and memory and yet keep his heart and compassion. ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 Megan rated it it was amazing

This was a delightful story about a single mother, who was also a professional housekeeper and her 10 year old son Root, befriending her new employer, a retired math professor, who due to a tragic accident is left with the ability to only retain information for eighty minutes, before it vanishes from his memory. This was such a uplifting book about the strong bond of friendship and how beautifully the housekeeper, the professor and Root all truly became better versions of themselves from this ne ...more

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Nov 17, 2020 Betsy Robinson rated it it was amazing

Sometime in high school I decided I didn't like and couldn't learn math. Also, I had no interest in sports. Until reading this elegant little book about a mathematics professor, his housekeeper, and her young baseball-loving son, I never realized the beauty I have denied myself.

Because I don't even remember the math I learned and because I have never followed baseball, I missed the poetry of this book, even as I sense it's there. I know it's there because of lines like this:

"Eternal truths are

...more

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Nov 14, 2019 Raul Bimenyimana rated it really liked it

Shelves: women-writers

The title of the book sums up what this story is about, a housekeeper who is employed to take care of a cottage belonging to a mathematics professor who, because of an accident, has a memory that lasts eighty minutes, and the housekeeper's son named root by the professor, because the shape of his head resembles that of a square root. While doing her work, the housekeeper and her son develop a strong friendship with the professor and are connected to each other by, you guessed it - mathematics - ...more

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Nov 15, 2020 Caro the Helmet Lady rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese, 2020-reads, cocaine-sadness

What a heartwarming and sad book. I went into reading it without too many expectations except that I knew most of my GR friends loved it.
While being seemingly simple and uncomplicated this story gave me so much reflection about the nature of memory, kindness and friendship. It was like a minute of sunlight on a cloudy and in general shitty day.

And it didn't even matter that all of my life I hated math with all the strength of my anthracite heart and that baseball is among those things that I wo ...more

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About Yōko Ogawa

Yōko Ogawa

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Yōko Ogawa (小川洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a ...more

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“Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.” — 108 likes

“He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world” — 51 likes

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