Yoko Ogawa: The Housekeeper & the Professor.

[Cosimah2o]

A young single mother is hired to care for an older mathematician who is suffering from anterograde amnesia caused by a car accident.

The mathematician was a great number theorist, and though he cannot form any new memories following the car accident ( only 80 minutes of short-term memory), he still remembers detailed information about the integers and their properties. The professor has come up with a few strategies for dealing with his problem, he covers his coat with notes to remind himself of things he would otherwise forget, time spends most of his time working on solutions to math problems that appear in magazines, the prizes from which are his only source of income though he shows no interest in the checks they send him when his entries win a prize.

Despite the mathematician's anti-social behavior, the woman and her son Root (so named because his head is shaped like a square root symbol) get to learn mathematics in order to understand him better. The child and the Professor with his limitations get along particularly well, treating each other very naturally meanwhile The housekeeper has to work harder to keep things going smoothly, but she too finds comfort in this odd relationship that develops.

In Fact, the boy's presence helps to bring the professor out of his numerical world - the child is the only thing that the professor seems to care about besides his beloved prime numbers, although The Professor's mathematical enthusiasm is unstoppable, he's also able to convey a lot of the wonder of numbers to both mother and son, even the housekeeper gets caught up in it, to the extent that: "when I encountered a large number that I suspected might be prime, I had to divide it to be sure".
They are an unlikely trio, however the relationship that grows between them is as close as any family bond could ever be.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a fairly simple story that is very nicely told. The mix of mathematics and domestic life is appealing and well done.
Its 180 pages goes by very quickly, the reader is able to easily get to know the characters and feel empathy for them without knowing their names. The story transcends the need for names, in fact, the names of the characters in the book are never mentioned.. In addition to a lot of number theory, the novel includes many references to baseball, a few references to religion and some significant references to Euler's formula relating e , π, i , 1 .

Ogawa's writing style is subtle and elegant, very highly recommended!!

 

[Peder]

Sounds like a fascinating book. I'll be very interested to see how the author weaves a regard for mathematics into the story of three lives. I've not heard of a novel with similar theme, although maybe Abbott's Flatland would be the closest.
Good review. :flowers:

 

[Cosimah2o]

maybe Abbott's Flatland

I read it many years ago maybe in the high school, a two-dimensional world where social status is dependent on the number of angles a figure possesses although the women in Flatland are simply straight lines Yes, I remember this two-dimensional society cannot comprehend a third dimension.

 

[Seven_Blue]

I've not heard of a novel with similar theme, although maybe Abbott's Flatland would be the closest.

I have read The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano, although there wasn't too much mathematical references. Yes, 2 numbers of 13 digits that supposedly are prime.
However, Paolo Giordano is to be commended for his brilliant writing style and and he does a masterful job of describing their sadness and its effects.

 

[Cosimah2o]

I have read The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano

I have not read this book, but I have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

2 numbers of 13 digits that supposedly are prime.

There are many ways for testing whether a number is prime or composite.
( Even if you want to know whether a prime number belongs to the fermat's prime number or the mersenne's prime number or probable prime or coprime or ... )
If you wanna test these 2 numbers, doing that:
- Find the square root of the number and then divide the number by all the prime numbers less than the square root.
If a number is not divisible by any of the prime numbers less than the square, it is PRIME, if it is, it's COMPOSITE.

 

[Cosimah2o]

Sorry, I forgot a word in the last sentence, root !
- Find the square root of the number and then divide the number by all the prime numbers less than the square root.
If a number is not divisible by any of the prime numbers less than the square root, it is PRIME, if it is, it's COMPOSITE.

 

[Seven_Blue]

Oh merci for your explanation!
Then, the square root reduces the number of divisions. I see.
Yes, I understood better why Matthia divides those 2 numbers by some prime, although I found a program of prime numbers calculators online and so I didn't lose my head and neurons with the Sieve of Eratosthenes. (Just Enough :lol

( Even if you want to know whether a prime number belongs to the fermat's prime number or the mersenne's prime number or probable prime or coprime or ... )

Or Sophie Germain prime! I am reading a roman about Galois and Sophie Germain appears there. In fact, there are references to twin prime and Brun's constant.
This book is very interesting!

 

[Cosimah2o]

Or Sophie Germain prime! I am reading a roman about Galois and Sophie Germain appears there.

Yes, they met in the Academy of Sciences during a conference although Sophie Germain thought that he was a rude boy.
Evariste Galois, the short career and life of boy-genius, he dreamed of solving the quintic, a complex mathematical equation. In fact, he provided a criteria for when a polynomial of any degree was solvable by radical. He accomplished this by the use of Group Theory.
But It is amazing, during the course of his short life, how often a single stroke of good fortune might have altered his life for the better.
I read The French Mathematician and yes, Galois' life is cloaked in mystery and misfortune.
By the way, Evariste Galois also met Alexandre Dumas.

 

[Seven_Blue]

But It is amazing, during the course of his short life, how often a single stroke of good fortune might have altered his life for the better.

Yes, when he was just 17, he submitted his first work on the Theory of Equations to the Academy of Sciences and Augustin Cauchy was chosen to referee Galois' work, but he lost the material so, the material never received the attention it deserved.

- or when his father dies, an alleged suicide and a days after the death of his father, Galois must take the examination for entrance into l'Ecole Polytechnique, of course he failed the exam and unable to gain admission to l'Ecole Polytechnique, Galois enters l'Ecole Normal, but he will be expelled due to his political interest , he was member of > Société Des Amis du Peuple, a Secret Republician society.
- The unrequited love by Stéphanie Dumotel. His strange death, the alleged and mysterious duel.

By the way, Evariste Galois also met Alexandre Dumas.

- Yes, the republician banquet and then he was arrested and he spent 3 month in prision.

There was things I understood over halfway such as : the Abel-Ruffini method or Tartaglia-Cardano method. There was references to prime numbers and also to square roots. And yes, the group theory. But I didn't understand a mention to Newton about a problem called Ex Ungue Leonis. Yes, I know this translation, the lion by his claw, but I don't understand which is the context. Do you Know it?

 

[Cosimah2o]

But I didn't understand a mention to Newton about a problem called Ex Ungue Leonis. Yes, I know this translation, the lion by his claw, but I don't understand which is the context. Do you Know it?

Actually, it was the Brachistochrone's problem who did Johann Bernouilli, a Swiss mathematician, he had challenged his colleagues ( Isaac Newton , Jakob Bernoulli - Johann's brother-, Gottfried Leibniz, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Guillaume de l'Hôpital) to solve it.

The Brachistochrone is a curve of fastest descent, that is, a curve between two points that is covered in the least time.

- The problem can be stated as follows:
Given two points ( A and B) on a plane at different heights, what is the shape of the wire down which a bead will slide (without friction) under the influence of gravity so as to pass from the upper point to the lower point in the shortest amount of time?'
Regarding the context:
When Newton’s solution arrived, unsigned, Bernoulli is said to have exclaimed,
- I recognize the lion by his claw. ( EX Ungue Leonis )

 

[Seven_Blue]

Oh merci again!
I'm sorry, it's my occupational habit, I use to ask all time.
On purpose, Ex Ungue Leonis, it would be a good headline for some article of Poltical's or Economic's or Social's issue.

 

[Cosimah2o]

Oh merci again!
I'm sorry, it's my occupational habit, I use to ask all time.

Il n'y a pas de quoi. La spontanéité est une vertu dans cette sorte de forum.
Tiens, tiens! Pier Paolo Pasolini, I have read about his life and his murder, an unsettled death. ( Although Giuseppe Pelosi confessed being guilty, I think those truly responsible for his death will never be found.) I've also read some of their poems and an essay called Corsair's Writing - Where have all the Fireflies Gone?
But I prefer to remember the Fireflies under another perspective, as Una Lucciola d'Agosto by Gianmaria Testa.

 

[Stewart]

I've been meaning to return to Ogawa ever since I read The Drowning Pool. She's quickly being translated to English so there's this and Hotel Iris to pick from now.

 

[beer good]

It's easy to count in integers, whole numbers - just look at those five stars we assign to the books we read here. Assign an exact numerical value to a 300-page book. There should be a mathematical formula, some simple way of explaining just how good a book is, whether it's cheap entertainment for the masses or a work of true Literature. But then there are those rare books that manage to be both, striking a balance between heart and brain, where both the author and her characters come across as intelligent, where by the end you've got so much to think about that you don't have to feel cheap if you get something in your eye.

The Housekeeper And The Professor really wants to be one of those books, with a plot that might have been turned into a vehicle for whoever is the Japanese Julia Roberts, yet so well-written and with so much going on between the lines that it feels meaningful. The plot itself is simple without being dumb; a young woman with no family or education takes up housekeeping to support herself and her young son, and the agency sends her to an old mathematics professor who's suffered a brain injury and lost his memory; he remembers everything up to 1975, but after that he just remembers the last 80 minutes. Every morning when she turns up, he's never seen her before. But somehow, between the three of them they start building a weird little family unit, centered around her son's math homework and the old man's fascination with baseball statistics; memory and friendship may be fleeting, but numbers are constant. I'm strongly reminded of the real story told in Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, about the conductor who can only remember the last 90 seconds of his life yet is capable of performing music that goes on for far longer since it gives him a context.

There's potential here. A lot of it. Ogawa is an excellent stylist, who manages to create complex characters without giving away too much, painting in very thin lines - despite all the mathematical themes she weaves in, and the personal and societal issues they hint at without making them too obvious, it's a very unbusy novel. It's refreshing, and I want to like it. And yet at some point I want to go "Oh come ON." It becomes a Sophie's World for adults, where Ogawa tries just too hard to show that she's done her homework, and tries to turn Fermat's last theorem and Euler's identity into some sort of mystical pieces of eternal wisdom showing that three irrational numbers can make 1. It's not that it's a bad idea, it's just way too overdone, and somewhere around the seventh time the professor explains how a certain number can explain the perfect world order that the everlasting blah-de-blah-de-blah I start wondering how I can possibly like this and loathe Paulo Coelho at the same time.

OK, that's unfair. Ogawa is far too good a writer (if maybe not author) to earn that comparison. A lot of people will love this book, and it's hard to tell them not to. It's going to make them laugh, cry, and think a bit. If I see it on a bestseller stand I won't be surprised. I'm just not sure how much of it I'll want to remember.

 

[Cosimah2o]

I'm strongly reminded of the real story told in Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, about the conductor who can only remember the last 90 seconds of his life yet is capable of performing music that goes on for far longer since it gives him a context.

By the way, there was a movie called Memento, about a guy who has short term memory and he wrote words and numbers in his body (like a tattoo) for remembering his own life..

I start wondering how I can possibly like this and loathe Paulo Coelho at the same time.

It seems, you have a little crusade with Paulo Coelho ! I remember, I read his literary criticism about the Alchemist ( your reading list) and I must recognize it was so funny! ( So much for subtlely )

 

[Peder]

Add me to the little crusade against Coelho. The Alchemist is the only book I felt I had wasted my money on. Correct that: one of the only two books I felt I had wasted my money on. :sad:

 

[beer good]

By the way, there was a movie called Memento, about a guy who has short term memory and he wrote words and numbers in his body (like a tattoo) for remembering his own life..

Yup. Good movie. Better than this book.

It seems, you have a little crusade with Paulo Coelho ! I remember, I read his literary criticism about the Alchemist ( your reading list) and I must recognize it was so funny! ( So much for subtlely )

I wouldn't call it a crusade, but yes, thanks to his singular awfulness Coelho is sort of my personal touchstone when it comes to this kind of literature - books that only serve to reassure the reader, make them feel clever for reading a "deep" book even though it's superficial as hell, and point out that the world is perfectly arranged and everything is in its right place. Like I said, Ogawa is nowhere near as bad as Coelho - I thought the novel was OK, no more, no less - but there's enough of the same kind of thinking in it to raise my hackles just a little bit.

 

[Cosimah2o]

Add me to the little crusade against Coelho. The Alchemist is the only book I felt I had wasted my money on. Correct that: one of the only two books I felt I had wasted my money on. :sad:

Don't worry Peder, i'm going to create a new thread called << My little Literary Crusade against : >>

**** I guess, there are other books or authors that discouraged us too.

I wouldn't call it a crusade, but yes, thanks to his singular awfulness Coelho is sort of my personal touchstone when it comes to this kind of literature - books that only serve to reassure the reader, make them feel clever for reading a "deep" book even though it's superficial as hell, and point out that the world is perfectly arranged and everything is in its right place.

( I should cut and copy his words for my next post :whistling :lol: