Book Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor, by Yoko Ogawa (2006; transl. S. Snyder, 2009)


What you need to know about this novel: it’s set in Japan and the original was written in Japanese. There is a housekeeper who is employed to clean and cook for an elderly mathematics professor. She is a single mother with a 10-year-old son, known in the story as ‘Root’. The intrigue in the plot is the professor’s unique condition – since he was involved in a traffic accident some 30 years ago, the span of his memory has been limited to 80 minutes. As you’d imagine, this creates quite a challenging and unusual scenario. Indeed, all of the professor’s previous housekeepers had, for unstated reasons, left his employment after only a brief period.

Each morning, the professor is effectively meeting his housekeeper for the first time, not having any recollection of the happenings of yesterday. He keeps notes pinned to his clothes to remind him of the most important facts that can’t stay in his mind (the most prominent of which is ‘my memory only lasts 80 minutes’). This way, he knows that he has a housekeeper, but doesn’t remember anything about her each time he opens the door to let her in.

The professor is, understandably, reclusive, nervous, and shy, but the housekeeper and her son help him to face the word a little bit more. He especially forms a close relationship with Root (who he so named for the flat top of his head, which he likened to the square root symbol). More than anything, the elderly man and young boy bond over a shared love of baseball, both supporting the Hanshin Tigers (albeit in differing eras), whose fortunes throughout the season in which the story is set is a major theme of the book.

In return, the professor also brings a lot into the lives of Root and his mother. His mathematical mind is brilliant, and his world revolves around numbers, with fascination to be found everywhere – shoe sizes, birth dates, shirt numbers, etc. He opens up this world to the housekeeper, teaching her some maths, and giving her the confidence to pursue her own interest. There is a lot in the book about prime numbers, perfect numbers, imaginary numbers, triangular numbers, Fermat’s theorem, Euler, etc. My own father was a maths teacher, so some of the conversation of a numbers fanatic takes me back to childhood teatime discussions; however, there’s nothing complicated in the book that should put any reader off – you can possibly learn a bit, but you don’t need to understand the maths to enjoy the story.

I think one of the most compelling aspects of this story is the impossibility of the scenario. You constantly think of the implications of simple things we take for granted each day, and I sometimes wondered whether the author had made an error with what could and could not be possible for the professor to manage (I don’t think she made any grave errors). The writing style is simple, which I thought could possibly result from the translation. However, it somehow suits the very restricted world of the professor and the only two other people who really pay him any attention. Ultimately, the book is a very nice story. One that will certainly remain in the memory.  

 

Favourite Character: I liked all of the characters in this book. The professor, I suppose, is the star of the show.


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