{"id":338,"date":"2021-02-24T15:36:28","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T15:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=338"},"modified":"2021-02-24T15:36:28","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T15:36:28","slug":"the-housekeeper-and-the-professor-by-yogo-ogawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2021\/02\/24\/the-housekeeper-and-the-professor-by-yogo-ogawa\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Housekeeper and The Professor” by Yogo Ogawa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memory and memory loss are reoccurring themes in Japanese novelist, Yoko Ogawa\u2019s fiction. Last year I read and thoroughly enjoyed her most recent novel, The Memory Police <\/em>which is entirely focused upon the power and importance of memory. Here, in a much earlier novel, The Housekeeper and The Professor<\/em>, Ogawa focuses upon a close set of characters and explores the relationship between a professional housekeeper and carer, the older mathematician she is paid to care for and her ten year old son whom she often brings to work with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so-called Professor of the title is an intriguing character. He\u2019s an academic and mathematics genius who, several years previously, sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and has since struggled to maintain short term memories. When we\u2019re first introduced to the Professor he cannot remember anything which took place more than 80 minutes ago. He has resorted to pinning notes on to his clothes in an attempt to convey important pieces of information to himself. The Professor\u2019s fondness for maths and baseball remain intact, as does his ability to reminisce about the distant past. All other thoughts and experiences, no matter how visceral or important, fade from his memory within a short time. As the novel progresses and the Professor\u2019s condition worsens, his short-term memory gradually erodes until he finds himself struggling to remember anything and is, in the book\u2019s final chapters, moved into residential care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em> is not explicitly a novel dealing with Dementia. However, many of the symptoms displayed by the Professor are associated with various kinds of Dementia: his memory loss and disorientation, the comfort he takes from routine, his preoccupation with the past, the slow decline of his physical health and inability to connect with a carer he doesn\u2019t recognise from one visit to the next. Therefore, it\u2019s possible to learn about these specific experiences from Ogawa\u2019s portrait of the Professor. I\u2019ve included this novel in my list of texts because it explores a youngish man\u2019s experience of memory loss, (the Professor is only in his late 50s when his condition first develops), and because it\u2019s such a well-drawn and invaluable synopsis of the relationship which can develop between a person and their professional carer. By the novel\u2019s close, it is quite clear that the time and attention she\u2019s given to the Professor, mean that the Housekeeper understands him better than his own family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a gentle novel with beautifully crafted characters and due attention paid to recording the experience of memory loss with honesty and precision, but also a modicum of hope. I\u2019ve really enjoyed Ogawa\u2019s writing and now intend to track down more of her novels. I\u2019d thoroughly recommend this book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Housekeeper and the Professor was published by Vintage in 2010 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder Memory and memory loss are reoccurring themes in Japanese novelist, Yoko Ogawa\u2019s fiction. Last year I read and thoroughly enjoyed her most recent novel, The Memory Police which is entirely focused upon the power and importance of memory. Here, in a much earlier novel, The Housekeeper and The Professor, Ogawa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,75,9,4],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-japanese","tag-man","tag-novels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}