Book of the Day

The Housekeeper and the Professor

          If you are looking for a short read, something light and heartwarming, then this is the right book for you. The housekeeper and the Professor is a Japanese contemporary novel, in which the events are narrated by the housekeeper.

          The story starts with the housekeeper employment at the place of a 64-year old mathematics professor with memory problems. He had an accident at the age of 47, and that's when his memories seized to stay longer than 80 minutes. He remembers everything from before the accident but nothing after would stay longer than the 80 minutes. The one thing that helped him to stay composed is his beloved mathematics. He would stay for days and weeks cracking mathematical puzzles and drawing out proofs. However, that's not all there is to the professor. The introduction of the new housekeeper and her ten year-old son to his limited life, let us witness another side of him.

         The Housekeeper and the professor is not the kind of book were you'd be expecting certain outcomes or waiting for something to happen. It has a way of drawing you into the world of the narrator. You don't follow and witness action and events throughout the book, you follow the development of a pure and humane relationship between the main characters. When there are actual families that fail to maintain ties between their members, a 64 year old with memory troubles make it to the hearts of the, completely strange housekeeper and her little son. They form a strong bond, even if one-sided, sometimes due to the professor's condition, but it's one that warms your heart. The professor's passion for mathematics seeps into you just like it does with the housekeeper. You'd start to think that the mathematics you've hated all your life can be something amusing. Also, if you're a baseball fan, then there's a plus to you with all the baseball references in the book, and if you are not, it doesn't matter. They don't play baseball here in Egypt, and my knowledge of it is pretty basic, but I enjoyed the book anyway, and I don't feel like I've missed much.

         I've always been, specifically, fascinated by novels that deal with human relationships and how noble they can be. My fascination is possibly because we lack this kind of thing in our society and the world we live in generally. The Housekeeper and the Professor gave me a taste of the small, but beautiful, world of little Root, the housekeeper and the professor. It was one of my most favorable reading experiences.