Fluttering among the pages of this novel will reveal a forbidding number of algebraic equations sprinkled through the dialogue. Don't put the book down. Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is a richly emotional experience--yes, a plunge into advanced mathematics and Japanese baseball, but so human, filled with so many telling, brilliant touches, that the math parts border on poetry and the baseball parts become a language of love between an old man and a boy who both adore the same team. 
Like the housekeeper, the reader is captivated by the unexpected lyrical philosophy behind numbers. "In mathematics," says the Professor, "the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows. . . " Beyond the mysteries of perfect numbers are the mysteries of the Professor. Why is he so worried when he finds out the housekeeper's son has been left home alone after school, concerned enough to insist that the boy come to his house every afternoon from now on? Why does the Professor become an emotional wreck when the boy cuts his hand, rushing him on his back to the nearest medical facility?
The novel is the young housekeeper's description of the two men in her life, her employer and her son, and the fragile friendship they build around their love of the Tigers baseball team, laced with the thrill of prime numbers and the mathematical search for "the secrets of the universe, copied out of God's notebook." Ogawa has the perfect light touch, never milking her dramatic situations, keeping her story realistic and honest. It's all exquisitely touching and impossible to read dry-eyed, an utterly masterful depiction of friendship, a warm-hearted tribute to the unexpected ways that damaged people can change our lives.--Nick DiMartino
Shelf Talker: A story of three people helping each other to find happiness, laced with advanced mathematics and Japanese baseball, The Housekeeper and the Professor is a masterful depiction of friendship.