"The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa ****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Originally published in 2003
• Japanese author
• Characters:  no names.....the housekeeper, the professor, and her son, nicknamed Root by the professor, because his flat head looked like the symbol for square root
• Set in Japan, 1990s
• Quotes:
• p.7..."Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world.  They were a safe, a source of comfort."
• p.19..."With my finger I traced the trail of numbers from the ones the Professor had written to the ones I'd added, and they all seemed to flow together, as if we'd been connecting up the constellations in the night sky."
• p.43....I uncovered propositions that existed out there long before we were born.  It's like copying truths from God's notebook, though we aren't always sure where to find this notebook or when it will be open."
• p.62....."To me, the appeal of prime numbers had something to do with the fact that you could never predict when one would appear."....not unlike a deep connection to another person
• p.100....."Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it."
• p.116....."Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions.  Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression--in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so."
• p.124...."In my imagination, I saw the creator of the universe sitting in some distant corner of the sky, weaving a pattern of delicate lace so fine that even the faintest light would shine through it.  The lace stretches out infinitely in every direction, billowing gently in the cosmic breeze.  You want desperately to touch it, hold it up to the light, rub it against your cheek.  And all we ask is to be able to re-create the pattern, weave it again with numbers, somehow, in our own language; to make even the tiniest fragment our own, to bring it back to earth."
• p.130...."He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers.  For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world."
• p.140...."So you think that zero was there waiting for us when humans came into being, like the flowers and the stars? You should have more respect for human progress.  We made the zero, through great pain and struggle."
• p.141...."Someone had to overcome this reasonable assumption, someone had to figure out how to express nothing as a number.  This unknown man from India made nonexistence exist.  Extraordinary, don't you think?"....mind boggling actually

• Review:  I thought this book was an elegant gem of a read.  The touching story of the relationship between a housekeeper, a professor whose short-term memory lasts only 80 minutes, and the housekeeper's son.  The relationship is both unique, simple, and profound.  The interweaving of mathematical theory and relationship was deceptively simple.  I think Ogawa has created a theorem for both eternal connection and divine order. I smiled the entire time I was reading it.  Just lovely!