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The Housekeeper And The Professor (2009)

by Yōko Ogawa(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0312427808 (ISBN13: 9780312427801)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Picador

review 1: This is a book that has sat in my collection for some time, but it was because another reviewer mentioned it had a connection to baseball, and I was reeling from the annual end-of-baseball-season malaise (even though my team won the Series), I had to read it. What a delight. A professor of mathematics had suffered a brain injury years ago and only retains memories of 80 minutes at which time his "tape" is overwritten. Told from the latest in a line of housekeeper/caretakers, the story unfolds between the two of them and her 10 year old son. As with Pete Hammill's Snow in August, baseball provides a connection between the old man and the boy, with the mother finding a new joy in the beauty and elegance of numbers. Some of the formulae and math examples were intriguing ... moreto me, although I have no background in the subject. Like math, the book is elegant and doesn't have an extra word. Worth a deep read despite its slender length.
review 2: When I mentioned to my 17 year old daughter one day that I didn't understand people who "loved" math, she made the surprising suggestion that I read the The Housekeeper and the Professor. As book recommendations from my teenager are rare, I took her up on it and found that this lovely book not only opened my eyes to the world of numbers but was a delight to read, with well-draw, sympathetic characters and an engaging storyline. less

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