The Housekeeper and the Professor
Today is Pi Day, so I’d like to recommend a book that has something to do with mathematics.
Content
First of all, I would like to reassure the readers of my blog: No, you do not need to have studied mathematics to understand this book. Since the professor is a number theorist, he is mainly concerned with the properties of numbers, and the book remains very accessible because he does not explain overly complicated formulas or principles. The protagonist of the book also knows very little about mathematics, but as professors often do he is happy to explain things whenever curiosity arises.
A delicate relationship develops between the protagonist, a housekeeper, and the professor, based on mutual respect and curiosity about one another. The special twist is that the professor has only short-term memory. As a result, he goes through life rather scattered – quite literally. He has attached notes all over his suit to remind himself of important things. Before long, the housekeeper herself is written down on one of these notes.
So how can a friendship develop without long-term memory? And what might the professor’s sister-in-law, who hired the housekeeper, still be hiding?
What did The Housekeeper and the Professor do to me?
The book touched me deeply because it tells a very gentle and sensitive story about friendship. I especially liked how eccentric the professor was and how open the housekeeper remained to his way of thinking. They meet each other with curiosity and respect, which warmed my heart.
The book made me reflect a lot about what friendship actually is, what defines it, and how special and beautiful the small moments of joy in life are. They are priceless and far more important than grand, dramatic gestures.
During my studies, I sometimes had a love-hate relationship with mathematics, and this book reminded me once again of the beauty of math. I probably still won’t become friends with probability theory, but learning about and discovering mathematical properties once again fills me with a sense of awe.
Rating
🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦 A gentle, life-affirming story about connection.
The author’s writing style fits the story very well: extremely sensitive and empathetic. The book is easy and quick to read, so the translation from Japanese is also very successful.
I particularly liked how the theme of friendship is explored—especially because the characters come from very different realities of life, and their personalities are accordingly quite different. I also found the quirky, nerdy aspects very appealing.
Who would I give this book to?
Anyone who shares a love of mathematics!
And perhaps also to people who are afraid of math—to gently reconcile them with it.
Which books would I recommend alongside it?
Anyone who liked Madame Ogawa’s style should also check out her other books beyond the math professor stories. I haven’t read any of her other works yet, but I would still recommend them blindly, since I’ve heard only good things about her books and her writing style really convinced me.
Further links
For all the nerds, I recommend the following website, which calculates where your birth date appears in the digits of Pi.
And for everyone who hasn’t been scared away yet and still wants to visit my blog, I recommend the following song about deriving (with amazing dance moves).
