The Housekeeper and the Professor
By: Yoko Ogawa / Narrated By: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
When numbers that reside in the heart can explain the Universe
Lemme tell you a bit of a story. I was 8 years old and wanted to impress my electrical engineer of a father with the simple solution to: 3n = 12. Well, somehow he told me I got TO the 4 all wrong and had me sit in the kitchen for HOURS and introduced x and y into these suddenly horrifically complex equations. To this day, I can’t look at a number (and I have a problem with letters that hold threats!) without feeling somewhat queasy.
Ahhhh, but my sister! I’m used to HER speaking of the beauty of numbers and equations, and I don’t wanna puke at all. So listening to The Housekeeper and the Professor, an audiobook that had the ability to make me ill, had me only cringing now and again as the Professor, a mathematician and a whiz at all things numbers (baseball stats, anyone?) spouts his equations and problem-solving like it’s going out of style.
He’s an older gentleman who, due to a tragic auto accident, suffered a head injury which left him with memories only up to 1975, and with short-term memory only as long as an 80 minute window. He’s always in need of some basic, gentle care and supervision, somebody to cook his meals and such, and he goes through housekeepers like crazy.
Enter our Housekeeper, and if she’s ever named, I blinked and missed it. I don’t think Ogawa named the Professor either, and the HK’s son is dubbed only Root because his flat head reminds the Professor of the symbol for a square root.
It’s a really, really good story. It’s touching as the three grow to form a bond of trust and mutual care. And the Professor always offers a problem to be solved, never ever belittling the HK and Root when they make mistakes, as to him, mistakes are as valuable as the right answer; they offer so much. The HK grows to find numbers magical, finds herself contemplating them and researching them on her time off, finding exquisite mysteries that explain not only the world she inhabits, but the Universe as well.
There’s a part where I found her snoopiness to be distressing; I thought she violated the Professor’s trust when she simply could’ve asked him. At best, she’d receive the answers to her queries, and at worst? He’d forget anything had been asked within 80 minutes anyway. The man, after all, keeps notes pinned to his clothes, things to remember, like a sketch of the new Housekeeper.
I also found the choice of narrator to be distressing as well. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Cassandra Campbell… in other things… where the story’s NOT supposed to be taking place in JAPAN for crying out loud! Why, oh why did they use an AMERICAN narrator?!? I mean, she does it well, conveys each character with warmth and sensitivity (all three have their emotional failings), but there are parts where I’d have liked to feel more in the skin of each of the characters, especially when they’re discussing their favorite baseball players, favorite baseball teams, all of which are JAPANESE!!!
It kinda took all the fun outta categorizing this with our Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, our celebration of all things Asian, all things Pacific Islander. It totally came off as an American story, and I don’t think Ogawa intended that.
But what do I know of Yoko Ogawa? So I’ll shut up now… I’m just sayin’…!
There are many touching scenes in this book, like an actual trip Outside, amongst People, for a baseball game, or like a dinner celebrating Root’s 11th birthday (And isn’t “11” the most wondrous of numbers?) as well as the Professor winning the Grand Prize in one of the popular mathematics contests he’s always participating in. Things go awry, but the three come together to soothe frazzled nerves, to make sure hope is never surrendered. To be there for each other.
There’s something else that happens, a misunderstanding with tragic consequences. But even that ends in a truly touching manner in that one understands that there’s still a tiiiiiiny bit of the old Professor inside; that he reaches out in such a sensitive way, communicates a grander knowledge than his only-80-minute memory allows.
If you get over the narration, I did, honestly—I’m just railing about here cuz I can—you’re in for a very sweet story. And a different way of looking at the wonder of numbers.
And I didn’t have to pop a Valium at all! Oh huzzah!!!
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