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Rating:  |
| Publisher: Picador USA, 2009 |
| Pages: 192 |
I found this book on BookBrowse and then ran into again at Three Percent a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester. The Housekeeper and the Professor was translated by Stephen Synder, Associate Professor of Japanese at Middlebury College in Connecticut. Synder has also translated another of Ogawa’s books The Diving Pool : Three Novellas. Yoko Ogawa, as Will Eells writes in his review, has become a huge success in the“last twenty years, winning numerous literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Tanizaki Prize, while also having one of her novels (the one in question) adapted for the screen in 2006.”
“We called him the Professor. And he called my son Root, because he said, the flat top of his head reminded him of the square root sign.” Thus begins this surreal fairytale of a young astute housekeeper and a middle aged world class mathematician, that was brain damaged after a serve automobile accident 17 years ago, the injury left him with inability to remember anything new, his short term memory is eighty minutes long and his long term memory stopped the year of the accident.
The housekeeper is sent by her agency to interview the Professor’s sister in law as the sister in law explains the situation she has just one rule for taking care of her brother in law: “Resolve any difficulties with consulting me”. As the Professor has gone through nine housekeepers, it becomes a matter of personal pride for this young housekeeper to keep her new job.
Armed with the knowledge that working for a person that only has an eighty minute memory, the housekeeper is well prepared to meet her new client. She met at the door her first day with the question “What is your shoe size?” The housekeeper quickly realizes that when the Professor is uncomfortable he turns to his numbers but she also realizes quickly on that he also communicates with numbers. The Housekeeper and the Professor settle into comfortable routine where each day they reacquaint themselves.
The housekeeper is entranced by the Professor and his mathematics, she wants to learn about numbers and it turns out he is a natural teacher. As the days progress, the Professor learns of the Housekeepers 10 year old son and is outraged that she leaves him home alone after school. He demands that she bring him to his house after school each day. Although it violates of her employment contract she consents.
From the moment they meet Root and the Professor become friends. Root is a great fan of baseball and as everyone knows baseball is a statistical game. Root and the Professor agree that if Root will solve a mathematical question the Professor will fix his old radio so that they can listen to baseball games. As the relationship grows between the three of them, the Housekeeper and her son decide to take the Professor to a baseball game. The catch to this is the Professor still thinks that it is 1975 and that the great Enatsu is still pitching for the Tigers, both Root and the Housekeeper do a great job of protecting the Professor from learning that he no longer plays baseball.
After the baseball game, the professor takes ill and the Housekeeper has to make a decision on whether to contact the sister in law, “resolve any difficulties with consulting me”, or to take matters into her own hands. The housekeeper decides to resolve the problem by staying the Professor until he well. The sister in law, misunderstands what has happened and has the Housekeeper removed from the job.
The housekeeper moves on to another job, which keeps her from her young son even longer every day. She then receives a call from her agency says she must get over to the Professor house as Root is there and the sister in law is upset. When the Housekeeper arrives they are all sitting around the kitchen table and the sister in law demands to know what they are trying to get out of the Professor, money? Here we arrive at a great revelation, the Housekeeper and Root are friends with the old mathematician, they like him. the sister in law is disbelieving until the Professor hands a piece of paper with eix=cos x + isin x written on it. This is Euler’s formula and quiet simply it “is a mathematical formula in complex analysis that demonstrates the deep relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function.
Shortly after the Housekeeper and Root return to the Professor his short term memory deteriorates and he is placed in a long term care facility. Even then the bond the three of the created is not broken.
The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story. For me it represents the best of human nature, all of the characters’ stretch beyond themselves, the housekeeper to learn ,to challenge her mind, the sister in law to that not everyone out there is using other people for personal gain, and for Root to accept the Professor not as a flawed individual but rather as unique individual.
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Rating:  |
| Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2009 |
| Pages: 384 |
I found this little gem on the Library Journal website Falling into Bounty Fall & Winter First Novels. Listed under literary rather than mystery so it caught my eye.
The story is about Billy Webb a recent college grad who lands a job as lexicographer at the 100 year old Samuelson Dictionary Company. As he settles in at his new position, he meets another young lexicographer Mona Minot and together they stumble across a series of citations that references a book Broken Teaglass that does not exist.
Billy and Mona soon discover that the Broken Teaglas hidden in the citations and they set out to find it. As they continue their search for the missing parts of the story we also learn about Billy and Mona. Both have had something happen to them that has affected their perception of themselves and the world around them. It is these events that slowly come out as they delve into the Broken Teaglass mystery in the citations. So while they are busy searching for clues to the mystery they have found, we are also learning about these two young people and the mysteries they hold.
This novel just sneaks up on you, and soon you are pulled into its quite intrigue.
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I came upon this last night when browsing and thought that I would pass it on. The Morning News announced its Sixth Annual Tournament of Books, The Rooster which will begin in March.
Each spring we take 16 celebrated novels from the previous year and seed them into a competitive bracket like the kind used in the N.C.A.A. basketball championship. A group of judges is enlisted, and the tournament plays out over the course of five rounds of matches in March. Each match sees two books battling head-to-head in brutal combat, with a judge explaining how he or she has chosen to move one of them to the next round.
Yes, we’ve had judges who flipped coins. So has the National Book Award—but the National Book Award won’t tell you that. Along the way, we ask our judges to lay bare their publishing affiliations and literary prejudices—to clear the cigar smoke left behind by the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize committees—and we also give you, the readers, a chance to help determine the winner. Our semi-finals round is called the Zombie Round because, based on your vote (see below for how to participate), two books that are eliminated early get a second shot at life, returning from the dead to take on the presumed finalists.
Finally, we declare one work of fiction to be the Champion Book of the Year, and we award/threaten its author with a live, angry rooster, the official Tournament of Books mascot, named after our favorite character in contemporary literature, David Sedaris’s brother.
If all of that sounds confusing and strange, check out this N.P.R. interview we did last year, which puts it a bit more lucidly.
Now, before we get to the judges and shortlist, let’s also review what this shortlist of books is not. It is not a list of the 16 best books of the year.
How could it be? We haven’t read every book that was published in 2009. Not even close. In fact, none of us has even read all 16 of these books, at least not yet. Some of these titles, none of us have even cracked. Put us all in a room together and ask what a couple of these stories are about and you’d probably get an awkward silence and a bit of giggling in reply.
All of these books have been acclaimed, although not universally. Some were picked for their obscurity, some because they won a prestigious award. Some made the list because they are beloved by millions, others because they’re popular overseas. One is a collection of short stories and one is a graphic novel. A couple were added because individuals we respect advocated passionately on their behalf. And many, many, many terrific books almost made the sweet 16, and we were sad we couldn’t include them all.
But note that the arbitrary nature of this contest does not make it more random than other book awards. For all their diligence and secrecy, book awards rely on the particular tastes of a very few individuals combined with the art of compromise. Not only can book awards not tell you what the best book of the year is, frequently the winner of a book award is not anyone’s actual favorite, but rather not anyone’s least favorite.
This is a grand idea, for those of us that have suffered through countless March Insanities here is a place to come for a little peace and solace.
For a list of the judges and books go directly to The 2010 Tournament of Books page.
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Rating: |
| Publisher: Recorded Books |
| Narrator: Sean Barrett |
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction last year, The Wilderness is a beautifully written novel about a man in his mid-sixties that has Alzheimer’s. This is Samantha Harvey’s first novel, her talent as a writer shines throughout this novel.
Jake, an architect by trade, is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Jake is a widower; he has a son, Henry, whom is in prison and a daughter, Alice. We are not sure whether Alice is alive or dead. He is living with a life long family friend, a woman whom has always been in love with him and is willing to take him illness and all.
The novel weaves through Jake’s past and present, one moment he is lost in the present then we slip into his memories. These memories are not coherent pictures but collogues of his life with the events being constantly rearranged. So, the question is, are Jake’s memories of the life he led or the memories of the one he wished he had lived. No matter, Jake certainly leads us into the wilderness.
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