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Search tags: y-ko-ogawa-stephen-snyder
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review 2019-10-14 04:38
The Memory Police
The Memory Police - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder

On an isolated island, oppressed citizens are slowly stripped of their material reality.

 

This was a very tightly crafted story. It didn't drag for a moment and every line moved the story forward. The oppressive atmosphere permeated every page, and made for some striking dismal imagery.

 

It's never really explained why, but the Memory Police have better things, and are clearly the bourgeoisie. Food is scarce, but the Memory Police have plenty to eat. And they have tea, which is usually a sign of high-class sophistication. They have higher quality boots for the snow, elegant furnishings, and fancy limousines to chauffeur people to their deaths. One disappearance after another they take away people's ability to maintain a normal life. Not unlike the capitalist's slowly taking away the rights of their workers. With each disappearance, most people say they will simply learn to live with it as they have every time. Sort of like how Amazon warehouse workers likely had to just learn live with having their steps counted while on the clock, and not being able to sit down or take bathroom breaks.

 

One summary of this book called it Orwellian, and that is a perfect description. There is constant surveillance, a hidden room where forbidden knowledge is cherished, and a bleak setting with characters persisting against all odds. Truly a powerful story with a powerful ending.

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text 2019-10-13 03:24
Reading progress update: I've read 206 out of 274 pages.
The Memory Police - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder
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text 2019-10-11 04:12
Reading progress update: I've read 113 out of 274 pages.
The Memory Police - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder

Reading this with a Goodreads group. It's amazing so far and I love the cover.

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review 2016-03-08 23:33
A Beautiful Tale About Baseball, Memory, Mathematics, and Friendship
The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder

The Professor, a brilliant mathematician (who is unnamed),  only has eighty minutes of short term memory, due to a traumatic head injury.

 

The Housekeeper assigned to the Professor (also unnamed), is young, astute, and has a ten year old son (nicknamed Root).

 

Each morning, as the Professor and Housekeeper are re-introduced to eachother, an unlikely friendship starts to bloom between them, as well as, between the Professor and Root.

 

From here the story unfolds in a very ordinary/extraordinary way. The Professor gives the Housekeeper and Root the only gift he knows how to give, the poetry of mathematics, and in return they give the Professor love.

 

Baseball is the common thread that connects the two stories, but these moments are written in such exceptional prose, it all flows together wonderfully.

 

All in all, a deceptively short book that pitches an emotional response. I will be reading more by Yoko Ogawa in the future. I leave you with my favorite quote:

 

"Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say: 'we don't know.' For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven."

---p.63

 

 

 

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review 2016-02-21 11:00
Eighty-Minute Memory: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa
Das Geheimnis der Eulerschen Formel - Yōko Ogawa,Sabine Mangold
The Housekeeper + The Professor - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder

The story of The Housekeeper and the Professor is that of the two characters already mentioned in the title plus the housekeeper’s ten-year-old son and the poetry of mathematics.

 

It begins in March 1992 when the narrator takes up her job as the professor’s housekeeper in a shabby back yard garden pavilion. The professor used to be a renowned mathematician until a car accident in 1975 left him with an eighty-minute memory. The housekeeper is intrigued by the professor’s capacity to see figures of everyday life in a mathematical light. One day she mentions her ten-year-old son and he insists that the boy comes to the pavilion after school to be in his mother’s care. It is the beginning of a strange friendship held together by the beauty of mathematics and the love for baseball.

 

For the full review please click here to go to my blog Edith’s Miscellany.

 

The Housekeeper + The Professor - Yōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder 

Source: edith-lagraziana.blogspot.com
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