The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The summary that caused me to add this book to my reading list:

 

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. 

She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away. 

How can you not be intrigued by this??

This is my review: 3 stars

Paul Auster said fo this book, "Highly original, infinitely charming, and ever so touching." I think that is a perfect description of this week. Heavy with mathematical formulae as it relates to perfection, life, simplicity and infinity, it was a bit cumbersome at times, but full of the story of a housekeeper and her son, making it interesting and personal. The man for whom they cared was a intriguing character. I enjoyed this fast and easy read, and will list it among the most interesting premises.