When I opened this book, I wasn’t expecting such a deluge of baseball and maths talk. Then, when I realised how much baseball and maths talk there was, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.

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The Housekeeper and the Professor is a quiet tale of a unique friendship between an ageing maths professor with a degenerative memory condition, the housekeeper employed to take care of him, and her son. Friendships with unlikely age gaps always tug at my heartstrings, and honestly this one had me looking like the human equivalent of the 🥺 emoji for most of the book.

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It doesn’t matter if, like me, you could not be less interested in maths or baseball, as the friendship at the heart of this novel transcends all that. I was quite surprised since the two previous books by Ogawa I’ve read were rather dark, but this one, while moving, remains quite wholesome throughout. A departure from tradition, but a welcome one!

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This one is again translated by Stephen Snyder and he has provided yet another smooth translation which is a delight to read!

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Recommended if you like books about unlikely friendships and memory!