Yoko Ogawa, "The Housekeeper and the Professor"

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a lovely, intriguing rendering of human relations and emotion that possess a calm dignity. Ogawa, who is well-known in her native Japan, has a gift for subtlety and an understanding of human psychology that allows her to build realistic, full-bodied characters who strike a chord with readers. I wasn't expecting to like this book - but its beauty and compassion won me over despite my fear of math and loathing of baseball.