The Housekeeper and the Professor was originally published in Japanese in 2003; it sold more than one million copies and received the Hon’ya Taisho award in 2004.

The condition of Krauss's victim is merely retrograde, meaning historical memories only are affected. One prefers to dismiss the thought, as one is sometimes reluctant to wake up from a beautiful dream.

The smart and resourceful housekeeper, the single mother of a baseball-crazy 10-year-old boy the Professor adores, falls under the spell of the beautiful mathematical phenomena the Professor elucidates, as will the reader, and the three create an indivisible formula for love. That weekend, the widow informs the narrator that the Professor will be moving to a long-term care facility, as his memory is now almost nonexistent. But, I digress, because this not a book about math, it is a book about people; about how they can come to care about one another despite the most challenging of situations. But the housekeeper in the story shares and gives all that she has to comfort and care for the professor, including her son. The Professor was right: my birthday and his watch had overcome great trials and tribulations to meet each other in the vast sea of numbers.

She cannot walk well, which the Housekeeper later discovers was a result of her being in the same auto accident as the Professor. But what moved me most is the Professor’s genuine love for Root that is eloquently expressed despite his frailty and vulnerability.

Ogawa’s disarming exploration of an eccentric relationship reads like a fable, one that deftly balances whimsy with heartache. 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. At the time, I was the youngest woman registered with the agency, which served a small city on the Inland Sea, although I already had more than ten years of experience. This story of memory, math, building a pseudo-family where no relationship has existed before is full of love and compassion. The story shows how one who shares an absolute love of a subject with others, in this case the subject is math, in all of its elegance, can spread that enthusiasm and pull others into that.

In June, the narrator decides to treat the Professor and Root to a baseball game, as neither has ever seen a game in person. Founded in 2018 by Willow Heath and Jess Esa, Books and Bao offers reviews of the most recent global fiction, poetry, and graphic novels along with inspiring cultural journeys. In comparison with Ogawa's The Memory Police and Hotel Iris, this story is particularly gentle and sweet.Okay, so I was 15 years old then, and a little bit immature to have Dennis as role model, but hey, who needs to grow up fast? While these number-forms cannot compensate for the Professor’s material deficiency, they permit him to keep his identity, which for a Platonist is a spiritual not a material entity. We fell silent for a moment, trying to picture the square root of minus one in some distant, unknown place. His sister would rather that he not have a housekeeper, however, because she believes that she can care for him herself.