Book : The Housekeeper And The Professor
Author : Yoko Ogawa
Publisher: Vintage
Rating : 4.5
Get it on: BookChor or Amazon
Story
(As on the back cover)
He is a brilliant maths professor who lives with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper 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 reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.
What I loved
What I loved the most about this book is how it is shrouded in a beautiful layer of mystery. For instance, the names of the characters of the book are not revealed– we only know them by their profession or by how one is related to the other. The main characters being the Professor, his Housekeeper, her son who was named Root by the Professor due to the resemblance of his flat head to the mathematical symbol root, and the Professor’s sister in law.
I immensely loved how each character was portrayed. The Professor is madly in love with numbers, especially primes, and the only other thing he loves as much is children. Like most owners of exceptionally brilliant minds, he prefers to keep to himself, and he is the kind of person who does not want to ask anyone for help, unless absolutely necessary. He does not demand or complain, and accepts his condition with demeanour. He also has numerous notes stuck to his suit to help him remember the most important things after every eighty minutes (which reminded me of the protagonist from Memento).
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.
The Housekeeper, who is also the narrator of the story is humble, understanding and utterly caring. Though she never had any interest in the world of numbers, the Professor’s devotion to numbers unearths something in her. I loved the way she enjoys his rants about numbers and the way she rejoiced each time she solved an equation that seemed impossible at the onset. She passed on all her good-naturedness to her ten-year-old son, Root, who strikes a deep friendship with the professor and show instances of maturity that goes way beyond his age.
The book is written in a very simple manner and the way in which the author drew connections between characters through numbers is nothing short of brilliant. I am not a fan of mathematics, but the way in which the book has been composed had me falling in love with it. Mathematics has always been something associated with chaos and hatred and through the Professor, the author sheds a new light on mathematics-on its elegance and beauty, which one cannot fail to notice.
What didn’t work for me
There were a couple of instances in the book where the reader is left on a cliffhanger. Given the nature of the novel, I believe this was deliberate on the part of the author. Hence I am not exactly showing it as a negative, I just wish I knew the answer(s). Also, the past of the Professor was just hinted upon; the novel would have been perfect if there was a deeper insight.
Conclusion
The Housekeeper And The Professor by Yoko Ogawa is an unembellished story on compassion, relationships and friendship, that portrays numbers as an art that draws unlikely, yet sumptuous connections between people. A heartwarming light read that hardly takes a couple of hours to finish, I immediately fell in love with the book. I highly recommend this book if:
-you love maths.
-you hate maths (cause somewhere in between the pages of this book you will develop a soft corner for it).
-you have a tender spot for books that deal with memory loss.
-you are looking for a short yet beautiful read.
Rating
Story – 4.5/5
Characters-5/5
Writing-4.5/5
Overall-4.5/5
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