"The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yōko Ogawa

The November book will be "The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yōko Ogawa. This book is short and sweet - only 180 pages! - since I'm posting this event with <4 weeks notice. The December book will be longer, and I'll post it with more lead time.

We will meet at Siesta Key Wine Bar (trying it again since last month was interrupted by Milton), a place with a cozy atmosphere and a wonderful wine selection! They do not have a food menu but allow outside food, so if you would like to snack on something, feel free to BYO food for yourself (or to share!). Please come prepared to discuss themes from the book and to ask your own questions.

I ask that everybody finish reading the book before the gathering - it makes for richer discussion! Please keep your RSVP updated 48 hours prior to the meetup so I can plan accordingly with the venue. No shows or late cancellations will be removed from the group; message me privately if you have a legitimate reason for this, and I'll reconsider.

***

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.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.