"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.
'There's a fine brain in there,' the Professor said, mussing my son's hair. Root, who wore a cap to avoid being teased by his friends, gave a wary shrug. 'With this one little sign we can come to know an infinite range of numbers, even those we can't see.' He traced the symbol in the thick layer of dust on his desk."
He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him.
Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.
***
If someone had told me that I would ever enjoy a book which features both maths and baseball I would have laughed. However, whilst a reasonable portion of this novel is about just that, I was utterly enchanted by it.
This is one of those books that has sat on my shelf for years (come on, we've all got them.) I am not quite sure why I have not taken it down before now. So, having finally blown off the dust and brewed a cup of tea, I settled in to read it. Having now done so, my heart sighs every time I think of it.
It is a short book of less than 200 pages but contains one of the sweetest and endearing relationships I have read in a novel. The closeness that develops between the professor, his housekeeper and her son was an absolute delight to read.
There is a fair amount of maths in this book; the discussion of various types of numbers, and having never been a lover of maths even when I was at school, in fact especially when I was at school, I remain unable to see the beauty in numbers that as described in the book.
Neither am I a baseball fan. It is not a common sport here in the UK but it's use as a device to enable the development of the relationship between the Professor and Root, the housekeeper's son, was perfectly achieved.
However, it is not necessary to be a fan of either of these things to enjoy this book. In no way did it detract from my enjoyment of the burgeoning affection between the three characters, and I was sorely disappointed when the book came to its inevitable conclusion. I felt a little bereft that these people were no longer in my life.
I definitely think that this is a book that I will read again. It has the ability to soothe and is a real balm to the soul. I strongly encourage you to read it, and would love to hear your thoughts.
ISBN: 978 0099521341
Publisher: Vintage
***
Yoko Ogawa has written more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction and has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope.
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