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The Housekeeper and the Professor: Summary and book reviews of The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, plus links to an excerpt from The Housekeeper and the Professor and a biography of Yoko Ogawa.
The Housekeeper and the Professor A Novel
by
Yoko Ogawa
Paperback: Feb 2009,
192 pages.
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 blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), 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. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.
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.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - Diane La Rue
Ogawa's fine prose and enchanting characters easily wind their way into your heart as their simple story unfolds to give voice to complex ideas about
math, love, family and memory. The Housekeeper and the Professor will make you
smile, and leave you pondering its meaning long after you have finished it. Full Review (members only, 809 words).
Booklist - Donna Seaman
[A] mysterious, suspenseful, and radiant fable.
Kirkus Reviews
Ogawa's disarming exploration of an eccentric relationship reads like a fable, one that deftly balances whimsy with heartache. Simple story, well told.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ogawa...weaves a poignant tale of beauty, heart and sorrow in her exquisite new novel.
Library Journal - Victor Or
This novel evokes the joy of learning, and, with its somewhat eccentric yet lovable protagonists, is a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.
The New Yorker - Stephen Snyder
Here, despite some touching scenes, the relationship never builds to any great revelations.
ShelfAwareness - Nick DiMartino
It's all exquisitely touching and impossible to read dry-eyed, an utterly masterful depiction of friendship, a warm-hearted tribute to the unexpected ways that damaged people can change our lives.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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I was sorry to see that there were so few reviews. I started reading COAL and could not stop. The only thing I am going to say is that I wish ...
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The tragedy, the sorrow, the loss, is almost too much for me to recommend this; on the other hand Mistry made me believe I knew these characters. I ...
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UK Orange Award longlist announced(Mar 17 2010) Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters and Barbara Kingsolver have made the longlist for the 2010 Orange Prize, a 20-strong list described by chair Daisy Goodwin as...
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National Book Critics Circle Awards announced(Mar 11 2010) Each March, the NBCC present awards for the finest books and reviews published in English (in the USA) the previous year in six categories: Fiction,...
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The Housekeeper and the Professor
(members only, 809 words).
Booklist - Donna Seaman
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