A short, graceful book. The story has little movement, a housekeeper gets a new job with a professor whose ability to form new memories ended with a car accident. Now he cannot hold onto the present for longer than 80 minutes. Told from the housekeeper's perspective, we see her development of a strange kind of devotion toward the professor, a friendship of sorts that involves her ten year old son, mathematics and baseball. 
 Most haunting to me is the story that isn't told. We get glimpses of the professor's past and his relationship to his widowed sister-in-law. There is so much beyond the story.