Ogawa's Housekeeper and Professor

“A problem isn't finished just because you've found the right answer.” 

Even if Tony has given up on his challenge, January in Japan, I still wanted to read at least one Japanese writer this month, and I have chosen Ogawa's book, mainly because I quite enjoyed her previous book, "Hotel Iris" and then, because 2016 looks like the year of big reading challenges, I have to tackle - or continue - two challenges I really love: Bellezza's and The Women Challenge.
"The Housekeeper and the Professor", published in 2003, tells the story of a mathematician who had a car accident and whose brain was damaged, meaning that every 80 minutes his memory erases, but he can still remember things that happened before the accident. And he loves numbers, prime numbers.
Reading the book you immerse yourself into Maths problems and the struggle of both main characters to relate to each other beyond the 80 minute time gap. You notice how the professor becomes affectionate towards the housekeeper's son, nicknamed "Root" and how they start sharing each other's passions. The professor rediscovers his penchant for baseball while the mother and son find out the pleasures of Maths problems. Until one day, when the professor's memory declines even more.

“The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.” 

Even if at times I was wondering if the Maths problems and equations did not take too much space within the story, I did enjoy seeing the connections beyond the obvious, the mystery that surrounded the numbers, just as there is always a mystery when you read poetry or listen to music.