The Housekeeper and the Professor: a book review

Mathematics, baseball, friendship....three uncommon denominators which come together to make the beautiful story of The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. This book was sent to me by Maggie of Stepping Out with Red Shoes On  in exchange for a book that I sent to her during my big book giveaway.

From page one, I was captivated by this seemingly simple, but very complex story. The Housekeeper  is a young single mother who never knew her own father (there are no names used in this book, save the nickname given to her son). Her son's father has never accepted responsibility for him. She works for a housekeeping agency, and is the ninth housekeeper who has been assigned to clean and cook for a semi-disabled former mathematics professor. She is given strict orders by the man's sister-in-law, in whose guest house he lives, to never bother her by coming to the door of the main house. She is to do her work and collect her paycheck and not get involved. However, there is one small catch; the Professor, because of a head injury he sustained in a car wreck in 1975, cannot retain any recent memory longer than 80 minutes. He keeps notes pinned to his suit jacket to remind himself of things. One such note that he affixes to the jacket after meeting the Housekeeper reads "This is the new housekeeper" and alongside he draws a rough sketch of her. Another reads "My memory lasts only eighty minutes." Even he has to be reminded of this fact.

Every day is the same. She comes in at 11:00 to cook his lunch, and she has to reintroduce herself each and every time, and again after every eighty minutes, if she has been out of his sight. He stays in his study, solving extreme math problems for a professional magazine, for which he has won many cash prizes and that don't matter to him. She cleans his house and prepares his evening meal and his breakfast for the next morning and leaves for home by 7:00 to be with her ten-year-old son. The professor finds significance in every number. At their first meeting, he asks the Housekeeper what size shoe she wears. When she tells him twenty-four centimeters, he tells her that it is a "sturdy number", the factorial of four. He goes on to ask her telephone number, he replies that it is the total number of primes between one and one hundred million. A mathematical genius.

When the Professor finds out by accident that the Housekeeper has a son, he becomes distressed that the boy arrives home from school to an empty apartment and has to be alone until she gets home at 8:00. He insists that she have him come to the house after that. Thus begins a sweet and tender relationship between the mother, the old man, and the boy, who he gives the name of Root, "because the square root is a generous sign, it gives shelter to all the numbers."

Root absolutely loves, and lives for, baseball. The Professor happens to love baseball also, but from the perspective of mathematical equations. In fact, he has never even seen a game. His favorite baseball player is Yutaka Enatsu, who played for the Hanshin Tigers when the Professor's memory stopped in 1975. Root persuades the Professor to have the ancient radio in the house repaired so they can listen to the games in the evenings; but to win this great prize, the Professor assigns Root a complex math problem to solve. Root is able, with his mother's help, to come up with the solution, and the radio is fixed.

Root is very protective of the Professor's memory. Every time they listen to a game, the Professor asks if Enatsu will be pitching. The first time this happens, Root tells him the truth. The Professor is so distressed that Root vows never to let it happen again. He concocts elaborate schemes to keep the Professor from finding out that Enatsu no longer pitches for the Tigers; and, in fact, has retired.

I don't want to reveal too much of the story, but there is a real baseball game, an injury, an illness, a separation, and a reunion. Along the way there are discoveries to make, math to learn, and a sweet surprise that brought me to tears, not the only time I found myself in tears throughout this lovely story. I was never more regretful about not learning higher math when I was in school. But, in a way, the Professor became my teacher, too.

"He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world."

Ogawa, Yoko. The Housekeeper and the Professor; translated by Stephen Snyder; copyright, 2003. Picador, New York. 180 pages.


5 out of 5 stars (and I don't assign this lightly, with To Kill a Mockingbird being my standard)

Julie & Julia (and me)

Earlier this year I joined a reading challenge hosted by C.B. James at Ready When You Are, C.B.  I signed up for four books and movies for 2010. My record of completing book challenges is pretty sketchy....well, none actually....but I'm determined to see it through, even if I bore all of you to tears. So here goes.


I'm pretty sure that reviews of  Julie & Julia and 'Julie & Julia' have inundated cyberspace since the release of the book and, subsequently, the movie. Most of you have read and/or watched it, so none of this will be news to you. Feel free to go on your merry way...I won't be hurt. Well, not too much anyway.

Julie Powell was drowning in a pit of government bureaucracy as a temp for an agency dealing with proposals for the 9/11 memorial site. Mostly she answered phone calls from irate/depressed/crying/nutjob citizens who required having their two cents heard by someone...anyone. Needless to say, this job was bringing Julie down.

After visiting her parents in Texas, Julie brought home a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Her brainchild was conceived.

What if she made all 524 recipes in 365 days? Annnd, what if she wrote about it in a blog? (Blog? What the heck's a blog?)  Julie's perception that doing this could redeem her flotsam/jetsam life and make it worthwhile is the core of the book. That she does it with laugh-out-loud, gut-busting humor in a kitchen that would fit inside one of JC's pantries is a delight. Julie doesn't spare any of the gory details, either in the kitchen, or in her personal life which suffers in a year filled with emotional ups and downs.

The movie was wonderful. I love Amy Adams, and she made Julie's character a little less dark and a lot perkier (well, Amy is perky) and sweeter. The book is much, shall we say, earthier (is that a word?) than the movie, but I thought the film stayed fairly true to the written word which is unusual in Hollywood.

The main event for me was Meryl Streep's spot-on portrayal of Julia Child. She brought so much humanity and warmth to the icon that is Julia. The romance between Julia and Paul (the delicious Stanley Tucci) was touching and real and if Meryl doesn't win the Academy Award, it will be highway robbery. (Sorry, Sandra, you know I love you, but you also know I'm right!)

Unfortunately, about halfway through the book, I googled Julie Powell, and I wish I hadn't. Revelations about her personal life almost made me put it down for good, but I picked it back up and it just happened to be during the lobster-murdering part. I was so grossed out, but laughing hysterically at the same time, and I knew that I had to continue reading. And I'm glad I did. If you haven't already, you'll be glad you did, too.

Book Review: Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America

This is my first attempt at writing a book review, so please be gentle with me!

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America,  by Linda Lawrence Hunt, was a story that begged to be told but was almost lost to history. If not for the daring action taken by a granddaughter-in-law, we may never have known about this courageous woman's journey.

In 1896, things were looking bad for Helga Estby and her husband Ole, both Norwegian immigrants. They had moved from Minnesota's prairies and large Norwegian enclave to Spokane, Washington. They were eager to escape the harsh living conditions in Minnesota:  the Siberian-like winters, the tornadoes that destroyed everything in their paths. The difficulty of making a living in such condtions and the encouragement of brochures about the splendid Northwest convinced them that they should relocate to the state of Washington. 

The brochures, which were published by the new Northern Pacific Railroad, made promises of a better climate, affordable housing, exciting educational opportunities and an already thriving Scandinavian population. That was enough to convince Ole and Helga to take their growing family west.

The brochures didn't lie, but failed to mention that the rapid growth of the region had resulted in an inadequate infrastructure which caused conditions that led to Helga having a life-changing accident on the streets of Spokane. She won an unheard of (women did not sue the government in those days) settlement of $5,000 for her pain and suffering. With the money, she was able to have risky surgery to correct her health problems and they also bought a farm outside the city where they built a comfortable house and Ole found work as a carpenter making a good living. Unfortunately, the financial crash of 1893 intervened. Banks failed, foreclosures on new constructions were common, work came to a standstill (sound familiar?).  Without work, Ole was unable to keep up the mortgage on their home and the bank threatened foreclosure.  This is when Helga's story really began.

Things were getting desperate for the family when Helga received an offer through "the instrumentality of a friend in the East." A wealthy woman in New York offered to pay $10,000 to Helga and her daughter Clara if they would walk without male escort across America. It was proposed as an advertising scheme to introduce a new kind of bicycle skirt that had been introduced at the Chicago World's Fair.

This is a fascinating tale of two women who crossed the continent armed only with a couple of revolvers, a can of homemade "pepper spray" and only a few days' worth of food between them (they were instructed to earn food and shelter along the way). In an age where women were not supposed to have a brain or do anything physical beyond fanning themselves, just the walking itself was a marvel. But the hardships and danger they encountered along the 2,800 miles of their journey made it extremely remarkable. And to make it even harder was the fact that Helga left behind eight other children, one of whom was only two years old, in the care of their father. She encountered prejudice and hatred along the way, especially among the Norwegian community that she left behind. To Norwegians, and to most Americans at that time, motherhood and the all the responsibilities it entailed were sacred. They were considered loose women by many, but were admired by many more.

This is not only a tale of two women, but of all women, as it occured during the early days of the women's suffrage movement. It also encompasses the pivotal election of William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan.

Unfortunately, Helga's journey did not have a happy ending, and because most of her family hated her for the consequences of her bold action and the terrible hardships that they faced themselves, they destroyed almost all of Helga's records with which she intended to write a book. Because of her granddaughter-in-law's actions, the author was able to piece together this story with the help of a great-grandaughter.

My son Jaye found this book for me at Goodwill. At first I was a little ho-hum about it, but when I started reading, I couldn't stop. I give it 4 stars out of 5.