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The Housekeeper and the Professor Yoko Ogawa Stephen Snyder 9780312427801 Books

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The Housekeeper and the Professor Yoko Ogawa Stephen Snyder 9780312427801 Books

Told from the housekeeper’s perspective, this novel starts with the introduction of a brilliant math professor to his new housekeeper. Due to an accident, the professor’s memories reset every eighty minutes. When we meet him, he is covered in sticky notes that remind him of who people are and where he has placed things. He has been through a number of other housekeepers already and is considered difficult. The housekeeper, a single mother, has a ten-year-old son who the professor names Root, as the hair on the top of his head reminds the professor of a square root symbol. Except for the nickname Root, these characters remain nameless. The novel focuses on the interactions between these three characters.

I found the math tidbits, like amicable numbers, shared by the professor to be interesting. I was not aware of many of them, so that was a plus and I used those facts to initiate conversations with my husband who was also a math major. The professor’s mind for numbers never failed him (even as his memory for other things did) and when forced to, this is the way he interacts with those around him and the world. The housekeeper, while insecure about her knowledge of even basic math, is intrigued by the math questions/beauty that the professor presents. She is unafraid of a challenge and is determined to apply herself and do her best in all situations.

The novel’s main theme revolves around family, especially the unlikely ways in which we create our own family. The professor was portrayed as the consummate professor – patient, inspiring, questioning, encouraging, and challenging to both Root and the housekeeper. His relationship with Root was tender and charming, as he became a surrogate grandfather to him. The housekeeper becomes more than a housekeeper as she is the professor’s main caretaker. The three of them create an unconventional family with their own rhythms and traditions.

With this being an intergenerational relationship novel about a brilliant math teacher plus the intriguing memory premise, it should have been a home run for me. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Despite its certain strengths, I did not like this story. The pace was too slow, the relationships were too sweet and even the tragic circumstances surrounding the characters could not mitigate that. Even though the novel was set in modern day Japan, I did not get a sense of the culture or place. The novel could have been set in Middle-America and not lost or gained anything. Ultimately, I was disappointed by this novel and would not recommend it to others.


Tags : The Housekeeper and the Professor [Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 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 the Professor. And every morning,Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder,The Housekeeper and the Professor,Picador,0312427808,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction General,Fiction Literary,General,Japanese (Language) Contemporary Fiction,Literary

The Housekeeper and the Professor Yoko Ogawa Stephen Snyder 9780312427801 Books Reviews

Elegant, serene, and spare novel about how kindness and accommodation make a family out of three lonely people in modern Japan. Ogawa puts words on a page with nary a misstep as naturally as walkers put one foot in front of the other. This reader felt only a sense of regret when I closed the book and left the peace, humanity, and grace that I'd shared living beside the Housekeeper, the Professor, and 10-year-old Root.

Ogawa seamlessly melds number theory, relationships, and baseball into a story of encompassing love that shelters a math genius left with only 80 minutes of short term memory, his tireless and generous housekeeper, and her Japan Tigers-loving son. In assured straight-forward prose, the author soon has three characters with seemingly nothing in common discovering that their lives mesh. Each of them have gifts of understanding and compassion, of pupil and teacher, of caregiver and recipient that make them stronger individually and as a "family." Together they embody the beauty of triangular numbers.
Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor" (2007) is a short novel that combines broad themes of reason and poetry with an exploration of the intimacy of family. Set in contemporary Japan, the book features three nameless characters and their relationships. The growing personal relationship among the characters is threaded in with the broader, eternal relationships that pervade reality, as seen in this novel, through mathematics.

A young woman in her thirties narrates the story. With little education, she has a humble job as a housekeeper which enables her to support herself and her ten-year old son. The housekeeper is given the assignment to work for a mathematician, 64, a former professor who lives in a small cottage near the much larger home of his sister-in-law. As a result of an automobile accident some 17 years earlier, the professor's short-term memory is limited to 80 minutes. After that time, his short-term memory is erased and begins from scratch all over again. The professor's deep, long-term memory of mathematics remains intact and unscathed by his loss of short-term memory.

The story shows the developing relationship that begins when the housekeeper is hired to provide care required by the professor's limitations of memory. The housekeeper is to provide simple cleaning and cooking, no more no less. Gradually a close familial relationship develops among the housekeeper, professor, and boy and expands to include the professor's sister-in-law. One of the keys to the developing relationship is mathematics. The professor introduces both the housekeeper and the son to the intricacies of mathematics involving square roots (the young boy is given the nickname "Root"), factors, and imaginary numbers. The professor is especially enamored of prime numbers and their properties. The mathematical discussions of the book culminate in a way that manages to be novelistically effective with a consideration of Euler's theorem. The intricacies of this difficult theory are used in the book to suggest the underlying unity of all reality as well as the unity of human relationships. The professor is a gifted teacher who allows his companions to discover and to appreciate mathematical truths for themselves, as Socrates does with the young boy in Plato's dialogue "Meno". There are indeed strong Platonic overtones in this short novel.

Mathematics also plays a role in this family story in the love that both the professor and Root share for baseball, probably the most statistically driven of sports. Baseball is loved in Japan, the United States, and many other countries. This book includes moving scenes of the little family growing closer through love of the game. For all his knowledge of the statistics of the game, the professor attends a baseball game for the first time in an important scene of this book. He learns something of the world of fact beyond the extensive statistical lore of baseball.

Mathematics is shown in this book as both reason and poetry. The book suggests that mathematics is an underlying key to reality and to truth beyond the world of appearances and differences -- a highly Platonic, spiritual, and controversial view. Reason and imagination are also shown as the unifying factors that unite people and that help to create love.

This book has a great deal of depth for a short novel. It is also enchanting and deceptively simple to read. I learned a great deal from several of the reader reviews which brought me to this work. "The Housekeeper and the Professor" will appeal to readers with a strong philosophical bent.

Robin Friedman
Told from the housekeeper’s perspective, this novel starts with the introduction of a brilliant math professor to his new housekeeper. Due to an accident, the professor’s memories reset every eighty minutes. When we meet him, he is covered in sticky notes that remind him of who people are and where he has placed things. He has been through a number of other housekeepers already and is considered difficult. The housekeeper, a single mother, has a ten-year-old son who the professor names Root, as the hair on the top of his head reminds the professor of a square root symbol. Except for the nickname Root, these characters remain nameless. The novel focuses on the interactions between these three characters.

I found the math tidbits, like amicable numbers, shared by the professor to be interesting. I was not aware of many of them, so that was a plus and I used those facts to initiate conversations with my husband who was also a math major. The professor’s mind for numbers never failed him (even as his memory for other things did) and when forced to, this is the way he interacts with those around him and the world. The housekeeper, while insecure about her knowledge of even basic math, is intrigued by the math questions/beauty that the professor presents. She is unafraid of a challenge and is determined to apply herself and do her best in all situations.

The novel’s main theme revolves around family, especially the unlikely ways in which we create our own family. The professor was portrayed as the consummate professor – patient, inspiring, questioning, encouraging, and challenging to both Root and the housekeeper. His relationship with Root was tender and charming, as he became a surrogate grandfather to him. The housekeeper becomes more than a housekeeper as she is the professor’s main caretaker. The three of them create an unconventional family with their own rhythms and traditions.

With this being an intergenerational relationship novel about a brilliant math teacher plus the intriguing memory premise, it should have been a home run for me. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Despite its certain strengths, I did not like this story. The pace was too slow, the relationships were too sweet and even the tragic circumstances surrounding the characters could not mitigate that. Even though the novel was set in modern day Japan, I did not get a sense of the culture or place. The novel could have been set in Middle-America and not lost or gained anything. Ultimately, I was disappointed by this novel and would not recommend it to others.