Reading the West

I must confess that I purchased this book purely because of its cover - which is absolutely beautiful.  There's something about shiny, blue paperbacks that's really appealed to me lately (also McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Ogawa's previous collection The Diving Pool), and this one juxtaposed pink dogwoods with mathematical symbols (what's not to love?).  I was definitely pleased to find out that the text was equally memorable.  Ogawa tells the tender, simple story of a housekeeper and her son, and the bond they form with a mathematician whose memory only lasts eighty minutes.  The novel explores the nature of memory and relationships while describing several basic mathematical concepts in a really beautiful way that presents numbers as elegant things full of more meaning than simply quantity.  It is a bit peculiar in its mixing of mathematics and writing, but its themes invite reflection, and like most of my favorite books lately, the details are perfect: a character receives the nickname "Root" because his head resembles a square root symbol - perfect.