The Housekeeper and the Professor is a short Japanese novel that describes the unlikely, arms-length friendship between a math professor with Alzheimer’s and his housekeeper and her son. It made me think of The Elegance of the Hedgehog but perhaps that’s a surface resemblance, both of them featuring mysterious Japanese men befriending women in apparently [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Japan’
February 6, 2009
Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothomb
I very much like Amelie Nothomb’s novels, although they get somewhat repetitive (how many “young Belgian woman in Japan” adventures can we take?) but I found this memoir, or pseudo-memoir, of, naturally, a young Belgian woman in Japan, tedious.
Tokyo Fiancéeflows nicely (I read it in English translation, so cannot really comment on the original) and contains the [...]
October 21, 2008
The Commoner by John Schwartz
The Commoner tells the story of Empress Michiko of Japan, a commoner (actually called Haruko) who married into the imperial family after WWII agaisnt the advice of her parents, and had to endure a most rigid life and a hateful mother-in-law before starting the cycle all over again with her own daughter-in-law.
The book reminded me [...]
October 2, 2008
When you are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Do you like David Sedaris? Then you will enjoy When you are Engulfed in Flames, his latest collection of essays that, as usual, mixes old and new, hilarious and embarrassing, and many countries including France (again) and Japan (new and funny.)
I found the first few essays so-so, which is why you may want to try [...]
March 17, 2008
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
My Year of Meats has a unique, loopy premise: the Japanese Beef Board, in an attempt to increase meat consumption, sponsors a series of TV documentaries on “average” US housewives who, in the course of a thirty-minute episode, will cook a meat-centered meal for their family. The first episode focuses on an apparently standard Midwest [...]
