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A review by dreaminfables
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa
4.0
Friendships that blossom within unlikely circumstances are my favourites. I enjoy reading about how each person gains from the other as their worldview broadens and they too learn a little bit more about themselves.
The Professor is a mathematical genius and his pure love for math and the truth of the universe is the central theme of the novel. We follow him through the eyes of his housekeeper who has been hired to assist and clean after a rather peculiar man. The professor had met with a tragic accident and now suffers from a condition wherein his memory only lasts for eighty minutes and then resets back to the time before the accident.
The Professor's life is defined by numbers and given his condition he makes sense of the world through them. Eventually the housekeeper takes heed and forms a profound bond with the numbers of her life. These numbers represent the absolute truths of nature and of human relationships. Even when his memory resets, the professor is shown to have empathy and feelings of care and love, especially towards the housekeeper's son whom he calls root.
Ogawa writes brilliantly about human relationships within unusual and complex themes.I will be adding more of her work to my reading list.
The Professor is a mathematical genius and his pure love for math and the truth of the universe is the central theme of the novel. We follow him through the eyes of his housekeeper who has been hired to assist and clean after a rather peculiar man. The professor had met with a tragic accident and now suffers from a condition wherein his memory only lasts for eighty minutes and then resets back to the time before the accident.
The Professor's life is defined by numbers and given his condition he makes sense of the world through them. Eventually the housekeeper takes heed and forms a profound bond with the numbers of her life. These numbers represent the absolute truths of nature and of human relationships. Even when his memory resets, the professor is shown to have empathy and feelings of care and love, especially towards the housekeeper's son whom he calls root.
Ogawa writes brilliantly about human relationships within unusual and complex themes.I will be adding more of her work to my reading list.