Housekeeper and the Professor

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小川洋子, Stephen Snyder: Housekeeper and the Professor (2010, Penguin Random House)

192 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2010 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:
978-0-09-952134-1
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4 stars (6 reviews)

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 …

16 editions

A deceptively light read.

5 stars

I'm writing this review years after I read the book. It left enough of an impression on me that it is the first book I am adding to my Read list here. The word that comes to mind is "charming". It's not a long read as I recall. It captures the elasticity of relationships, how a bond can almost break and then re-form. It's about memory, aging, and certain kinds of love.

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3 stars
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4 stars
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5 stars

Subjects

  • Fiction, humorous