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The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel…
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The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel (original 2003; edition 2009)

by Yoko Ogawa

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,2032174,130 (3.99)474
He is a brilliant math professor, with a peculiar problem--since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper with a 10-year-old son who is hired to care for the professor. Between them, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms.… (more)
Member:Maiasaura
Title:The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel
Authors:Yoko Ogawa
Info:Picador (2009), Edition: 1, Paperback, 192 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:math, foreign, slice of life, whimsical

Work Information

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (2003)

  1. 92
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (labfs39, chrisharpe)
    labfs39: Both have incredibly well-drawn, quirky characters that are lovable in their unique humaness. Both have highly intelligent characters that are vulnerable because of their very gift. In both books I learned things in fields not particularly close to me: math in Housekeeper and philosophy in Elegance.… (more)
  2. 10
    A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar (BookshelfMonstrosity)
  3. 00
    Naoko by Keigo Higashino (sjmccreary)
    sjmccreary: Also shows an ordinary Japanese family dealing privately with an extraordinary situation. No baseball or math, but lots of great descriptions of Japanese life.
  4. 00
    Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi (marietherese)
  5. 00
    The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (DetailMuse)
  6. 11
    The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (pitjrw)
    pitjrw: Unusual, beautiful relationships between the old and young
  7. 02
    The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (Becchanalia)
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» See also 474 mentions

English (203)  Spanish (5)  French (3)  German (2)  Catalan (1)  Japanese (1)  Swedish (1)  Dutch (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (218)
Showing 1-5 of 203 (next | show all)
Story: 8.5 / 10
Characters: 7.5
Setting: 7
Prose: 8.5

Themes: Family, work, memory, relationships, time, personality, mathematics, leisure ( )
  MXMLLN | Jan 12, 2024 |
A novel of love, loss, becoming a family, and the beauty of math. Elegantly told, with small details conveying deep emotions. I'm glad I read it. ( )
  Alexandra_book_life | Dec 15, 2023 |
So charming - a story about a mathematics professor who, after a head injury, has only 80 minutes of memory- and a housekeeper and her son and the mathematical perfection they reach.

I loved the imagery of the multiple pieces of paper pinned all over the professor’s suits to help him remember, how they rustle when he walks.

A story about non-romantic love that won my heart. ( )
  Dabble58 | Nov 11, 2023 |
A woman takes a housekeeping job for an elderly mathematician who has a memory disorder where he can't remember more than 40 minutes or so into the past. She is a single mother with a 10-year-old son, and she starts bringing her son to work. The three of them create a lovely, if sometimes challenging, friendship.

This heartwarming book is about the joys of loving math and baseball, and the power of friendship. ( )
  Gwendydd | Nov 5, 2023 |
Maybe even 4.5*

( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 27, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 203 (next | show all)
Den mycket uppskattade japanska författaren Yoko Ogawa introduceras på svenska med en riktig hjärteknipare. Annat brukar det sällan bli när gamla, sjuka gubbar sammanförs med barn.
added by Jannes | editDagens Nyheter, Jonas Thente (Jan 18, 2011)
 
The narrator in Ogawa's mysterious, suspenseful, and radiant fable, the youngest housekeeper at the agency, knows that her new client will be a challenge: nine housekeepers have already been fired. But when she meets the Professor in his small cottage, she is intrigued instead of wary. A brilliant mathematician, he lives a surreal life. The elderly Professor can't remember anything after 1975. He can absorb new information and new experiences for 80 minutes at a stretch, then it is erased, and he has to start over. Quiet and kind, his jacket festooned with scraps of paper on which he writes notes to remind himself of what he always forgets, he spends his puzzling days solving highly advanced math problems and winning national contests. At long last, he has the perfect companions. The smart and resourceful housekeeper, the single mother of a baseball-crazy 10-year-old boy the Professor adores, falls under the spell of the beautiful mathematical phenomena the Professor elucidates, as will the reader, and the three create an indivisible formula for love
added by kthomp25 | editBooklist, Donna Seaman
 

» Add other authors (48 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Yoko Ogawaprimary authorall editionscalculated
Snyder, StephenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Snyder, StephenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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We called him the Professor.
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No matter how much time passed, I was always the young woman who made painfully slow progress with numbers, and my son would always be the boy who simply appeared, and was embraced.
I'm not sure why I became so absorbed in a child's math problem with no practical value. At first, I was conscious of wanting to please the Professor, but gradually that feeling faded and I realized it had become a battle between the problem and me. . . . At first, it was just a small distraction, but it quickly became an obsession. Only a few people know the mystery concealed in this formula, and the rest of us go to our graves without even suspecting there is a secret to be revealed.
But those things aren't the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the truth. The Professor always said the word truth in the same tone as the word mathematics.
After all these years, I'm still at a loss for words to describe how purely the Professor loved children – except to say that it was as unchangeable and true as Euler's formula itself.
He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world.
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Wikipedia in English (2)

He is a brilliant math professor, with a peculiar problem--since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper with a 10-year-old son who is hired to care for the professor. Between them, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms.

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Book description
There is actually a Japanese movie Hakase no Aishita Sushiki / The Professor and His Beloved Equation, that may be inspired by this novel.
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