The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Summary:  "He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.  She is an astute young Housekeeper - with a ten-year-old son - who is hired to care for the Professor.  The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family." -Amazon

Written in simple language with unnamed characters, this is a beautiful, peaceful novel about kindness and the unique bonds between humans.  Because the professor is a math genius, math is elegantly utilized throughout the book to emphasize the wonder of the natural world and our place in it.

Don't let the length of this book fool you.  It is one of the most moving novels I've read in a while.

192 pages

5/5

End of Watch by Stephen King

If you thought Brady Hartsfield was finished after Holly Gibney delivered that brain injuring blow from a ball bearing filled sock, think again.  Despite the drool and vacant stare, Brady has discovered how to manipulate others with his brain, and he has begun even more dangerous than when he plowed through a gathering of job seekers with the Mercedes in Mr. Mercedes.  Of course, this is simply unbelievable, leaving the fate of hundreds of gullible teens in the hands of  retired police detective Bill Hodges, his business partner, Holly Gibney, and college student, Jerome Robinson.
This is the third novel in the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, and it is the most terrifying. When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill’s heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.  If you are easily frightened, this  story is not for you; it is classic Stephen King.
448 pages

The Free by Willy Vlautin

Amazon description:

While serving in Iraq, veteran Leroy Kervin suffered a traumatic brain injury. Frustrated by the simplest daily routines, and unable to form new memories, he eventually attempts suicide. Lying in a coma, he retreats deep inside the memories locked in his mind. Freddie McCall works two jobs and still can't make ends meet. He's lost his wife and kids, and the house is next. Medical bills have buried him in debt, a situation that propels him to consider a lucrative—and dangerous—proposition. Pauline Hawkins is a nurse at the local hospital. Though she attends to others' needs with practical yet firm kindness, including her mentally ill elderly father, she remains emotionally removed. But a new patient, a young runaway, touches something deep and unexpected inside her.

320 pages

I forgot to remember by Su Meck

Imagine waking up every day to a whole new world. That's what happened to Su Meck when she was 22 years old. She had a husband, a two-year-old son, and an eight-month-old baby. No one is really sure how the accident happened, because her husband's back was turned, and she can't remember, but she was hit in the head by a ceiling fan. The injury didn't look bad; just a one-inch cut, but it knocked her out and  she was bleeding profusely, so she was taken to the hospital. Her brain had bounced around inside her skull, and when she awoke she had no memory of her life up to that point.

After three weeks, she was sent home with a husband she did not know, to a house and children she had no memory of. The doctors had decided she was faking her memory loss, and she got no more therapy. But she couldn't read or write, couldn't find her way home if she went more than a few blocks, and had to idea how to care for her children. She was thrust abruptly back into the life of a suburban housewife, with no help and very little sympathy. She was essentially a child raising two other children.

This memoir was written to help people understand more about traumatic brain injury. Even the medical profession doesn't have a lot of knowledge about it, although it is better now than in 1988, when this happened. And family, friends, neighbors...she was treated with pity, disdain, contempt, and exasperation. She wanted to understand more about the whole issue herself, and she wanted others  to know what life is really like with this type of injury. She had a co-writer, and they went through her medical records, and did a lot of research on TBI. She explains the different types of memory, and how it works.

A very interesting, thought-provoking book.

280 pages