Read this when
The Housekeeper and the Professor
He forgets her every 80 minutes. She keeps coming back anyway. Also: numbers are secretly romantic. 🔢
Who it's for
A young single mother takes a job as housekeeper for a brilliant former mathematician whose memory, since a 1975 accident, lasts only 80 minutes; every morning she must be introduced again.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Yōko Ogawa's novel, published in Japan in 2003 and in Stephen Snyder's English translation in 2009, centers on a former mathematician whose brain injury in a 1975 traffic accident leaves him able to hold only 80 minutes of memories, so he pins notes to his clothing. A housekeeper sent by an agency comes to work for him, and he nicknames her ten-year-old son Root because of his flat head.
Where to find it
In print (Picador); widely available from libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an audiobook. Not public domain.
Before you start
Heads up: Memory loss after a brain injury.
Age: Ages 12+
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter LXXII
