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The Housekeeper and the Professor
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every 80 minutes), the professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the housekeeper and her young son. The professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities - like the housekeeper's shoe size - and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.
Yoko Ogawa's 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.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: 10 Famous Japanese Authors You Have to Hear
Thanks to the work of translators and publishers, Japanese literature is now more accessible than ever to English-speaking audiences. If you've ever wanted to learn more about Japanese culture and literature, you cannot go wrong with listening to audiobooks from Japan. We've compiled a list of the most famous Japanese authors who have helped define Japanese literature, and their notable works across genres and time periods.
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The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Magic of Ordinary Days
- A Novel
- By: Ann Howard Creel
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Olivia Dunne, a studious minister's daughter who dreams of being an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. An exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, though, and she finds herself banished to a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding much-needed friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp.
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I purchased this audio book not 15 minutes ago...
- By Kim on 09-15-16
By: Ann Howard Creel
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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Orphan Train Girl
- The Young Readers' Edition of Orphan Train
- By: Sarah Thompson, Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it's her attitude that's the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she's had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly's forced to help an elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. Just another adult to treat her like a troublemaker.
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Awesome book!
- By DebDeb on 08-06-18
By: Sarah Thompson, and others
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The Lake House
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 21 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.
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Enjoyed the writing, but oy vey, this book
- By Jennifer S on 12-28-18
By: Kate Morton
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The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
- By: Jacqueline Kelly
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The summer of 1899 is HOT in Calpurnia Virginia Tate's sleepy Texas town, and there aren't a lot of good ways to stay cool. Her mother has a new wind machine from town, but Callie might just have to resort to stealthily cutting off her hair, one sneaky inch at a time. She also spends a lot time at the river with her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist. It turns out that every drop of river water is teeming with life - all you have to do is look through a microscope!
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A Lovely Coming of Age Story
- By Julie on 03-13-12
By: Jacqueline Kelly
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Secrets of a Charmed Life
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades...beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden--one that will test her convictions and her heart.
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Rare 5-Star Across the Board!
- By Imamomof4 on 06-14-15
By: Susan Meissner
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Tesla's Attic
- The Accelerati Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Neal Shusterman, Eric Elfman
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
After their home burns down, fourteen-year-old Nick, his younger brother, and their father move into a ramshackle Victorian house they've inherited. When Nick opens the door to his attic room, he's hit in the head by a toaster. That's just the beginning of his weird experiences with the old junk stored up there. After getting rid of the odd antiques in a garage sale, Nick befriends some local kids - Mitch, Caitlin, and Vincent - and they discover that all of the objects have extraordinary properties.
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Not your typical YA sci-fi story
- By Chrism13 on 02-14-18
By: Neal Shusterman, and others
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Yoshie's much-loved musician father died in a suicide pact with an unknown woman. It is only when Yoshie and her mother move to Shimokitazawa, a traditional Tokyo neighborhood of narrow streets, quirky shops, and friendly residents, that they can finally start to put their painful past behind them. However, despite their attempts to move forward, Yoshie is haunted by nightmares in which her father is looking for the phone he left behind on the day he died, or on which she is trying—unsuccessfully—to call him. Is her dead father trying to communicate a message through these dreams?
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Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.
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Great performance!
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Dead-End Memories
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First published in Japan in 2003, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly discover their ways back to recovery. Yoshimoto's gentle, effortless prose reminds us that one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with, and that happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to pause and reflect. Discover this collection of what Yoshimoto herself calls the "most precious work of my writing career."
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Chapter Six Mostly Missing?
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In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.
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Adequate?
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A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.
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Unsettling writing, flawed reading
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The Decagon House Murders
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A hugely enjoyable, must-listen murder mystery sure to appeal to fans of Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, and Agatha Christie, with one of the best and most satisfying conclusions you'll ever hear. A classic in Japan, available in English for the first time.
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play it at x1.25 and it's great
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There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
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A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: It’s close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gig - watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods - turns out to be inconvenient. Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful.
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I LOVED it
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Out
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This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot's ringleader but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society.
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Out...
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Heaven
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Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami’s novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormenters.
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Great listen
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Shakespeare Saved My Life
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- By: Laura Bates
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before - supermax solitary confinement. In this unwelcoming place, surrounded by inmates known as the worst of the worst, is Larry Newton.
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Stunning and Disturbing
- By Beatrice Berk on 01-29-16
By: Laura Bates
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All the Lovers in the Night
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Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copyeditor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
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Enjoyable listen
- By Rose on 05-16-22
By: Mieko Kawakami
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Paris Without End
- The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife
- By: Gioia Diliberto
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Overall
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Performance
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Hemingway's creative influences for novels like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea came not only from his famous hunting trips, his liaisons in Cuba, or his relationships with Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and other Lost Generation writers. During Hemingway's period of greatest literary foment, his most seminal relationship was with Hadley Richardson, his first wife.
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author's research
- By Sean Hallahan on 03-19-24
By: Gioia Diliberto
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Life Ceremony
- Stories
- By: Sayaka Murata
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Overall
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With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
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Interesting concept but boring story
- By Roberta Marques on 09-06-24
By: Sayaka Murata
What listeners say about The Housekeeper and the Professor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Natalie
- 01-29-16
Sweet enduring inserting story
This is a gem. A feel good story and the book makes you look at math philosophically.
This would be one of my top books and it is the type of book that reminds me of Bel Canto in the way you fall in love with the interesting characters
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7 people found this helpful
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- Douglas
- 03-05-16
The Most Beautiful Novel...
I have read in a long time! Sheer poetry from start to finish! Please more from this author!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Someone who knows
- 10-02-17
Beautiful merging of generations
This touching,sweet tale is a balm to the soul. Although it's fiction, the truth of the importance of every human life is portrayed in an interesting way. I love the incorporation of math and baseball. Usually not two of my favorite subjects!
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1 person found this helpful
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- jhiebertwhite
- 08-07-18
Math is beautiful
The Housekeeper and the Professor made me believe in the power and beauty of mathematics. The premise of a math professor whose memory damage keeps returning him to the 1970/s may seem far-fetched, but this tale of his interactions with his young Housekeeper and her 10-year-old son is strikingly beautiful. The spare novel had me rooting for the trio. Decency, love and empathy shine through.
And the audio reading is top notch. I listen to 100+ books per year and am very particular about narrators who let the story shine rather than make distract you with overly dramatic readings or odd accents or cadences.
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- Mark
- 01-20-19
Not much happiness but if you like mathematics...
There is a gentle beauty to much of this book, infusing mathematics and Japanese baseball with grandeur. And while I didn’t dislike the book, I’d never recommend it to anyone. My own cultural ignorance may be related to my lukewarm feeling — emotions are not expressed so actions that might push the story forward are not pursued and melancholy blooms.
Because there is so little action, I couldn't help but be nagged by one of my pet peeves: The main female character has no interests of her own and only finds joy in life when living through the pleasures of the males around her. Still, I'll think about the book often as I recall amicable numbers and the strange relationship between 220 and 284.
Bechdel test: Fail — there are two female characters who speak but they don’t speak about anything other than a man.
Overall grade: B
Perfect narration.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Lewis Joseph Howarth
- 12-01-23
Such a wonderful story
It is a story what warms my soul. I love the characters and would recommend it.
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- SLC
- 11-11-16
Lovely, gentle, beautiful
A Japanese story translated into English but well worth experiencing. It is a gentle yet deeply engaging story about a love of math, human connections, family. An odd mix but brought together in harmony. Highly recommend even for those not interested in math.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Regina
- 07-22-22
Charming Story
A lovely and lyrical quick listen. And well narrated, too, bringing the story to life.
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- Brett B
- 02-08-23
Quietly beautiful
I am still thinking about this book nearly two weeks later, and likely will continue to do so for a long time to come. It snuck up on my and grabbed me by the heart. I've read a lot of great books in the last few years. This is one of the best.
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- Picky Teacher
- 06-23-23
What an outstanding story!
This book was unlike any other, I have read, and I throughly enjoyed it! I felt like I got to know each of the characters well.
The narrator was excellent!
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