Krishna
The narrator’s son is known as the square root because his head is shaped like one. (What? Yes, this is that kind of a book). The professor is a great exponent in stirring enthusiasm and even Root’s mother, the narrator, gets swept along in the infinite possibilities of the square root. For example, how does the square root of negative numbers really work?
The narrator worked as a housekeeper for the professor, as you may have deduced by now from the title. The housekeeper is hired by the professor’s sister and it turns out that he is suffering from a severe short term memory loss. He can remember old events and retains all his earlier knowledge but cannot remember anything that happens recently for more than ninety minutes.
So every day, he sees her anew and comments on her phone number or address etc (always about the numbers). Finally one day the professor sits and talks to her. (He now has a new note pinned to his coat – among dozens – saying that he has a new housekeeper with a hand drawn diagram of what she looks like (not even close).
Then one day he reveals the connection between two numbers (conversationally brought up at random) – 220 and 284. He shows (having worked it out all in his mind) that all the factors of 220 add up to 284 and vice versa.
When the professor finds out that she has a son, he makes her bring the son over every day and they develop a bond.
But all in all, it is about math and some of the tricks are even well known to you probably already. (How do you add from 1 to any number and find the total without the brute force method? – This is an example).
Even spliced with story about the absentmindedness of the professor and the affinity for math with the housekeeper and affinity for the professor by her son ‘Root’, this reads like ‘Learn mathematical tricks. Amaze your friends!’ kind of book.
But the story seeps in and keeps you from thinking that it is a math book camouflaged as a story. They take the professor to a baseball game and when they take him back, he falls sick and the housekeeper and root decide to stay back and nurse him to health, for which violation of her contract, the housekeeper is taken off and assigned to another house to work. This is a house where the lady of the house is mean and cruel and asks her to do work not normally part of the contract.
The professor’s sister in law, who was the cause of the termination of the contract, realizes that the housekeeper and Root are not after the money and contrite, takes them back to the professor’s service. There are a couple of instances where the housekeeper gets interested in mathematical problems, like Euler’s equation. I see the passion in the narration but do not see what the fuss is all about.
There is another scene where the professor ignores his teeth and needs to go to the dentist. No connection to the story’s main plot and seems pointless. Then comes a story of getting the Professor a specific baseball card.
The story ends with a climax of Root’s birthday, during which itself they notice a rapid degeneration of the Professor’s memory and thereafter there is very little left.
Interesting in some ways. But overall, the mathematics – the background – is basic. The baseball is all Japanese.
The book of course was written in Japanese and the translator does a credible job of keeping the linguistic part relevant (palyndromes, backward speech etc)
Not sure if I like it a lot. Definitely not a boring book but it has nothing special in it.
4/10
– – Krishna (September 2019)