Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This is very close to being a novel, it's related short stories about life in small-town Maine, most in the present day, and all connected by the irascible old woman Olive Kitteridge. The writing is wonderful, and Olive is a fascinating character: a school teacher and a mother, not quite likable, but admirable in her own way. Aspects of this book reminded me of my beloved Spoon River Anthology, because I couldn't help but start looking for all the little clues of connections between characters and stories. This book won the Pulitzer Prize earlier this year.
The Housekeeper and the Professor, by Yoko Ogawa. In this novel, translated from the Japanese, a young housekeeper goes to work for a retired math professor with a strange brain injury. Due to a car accident, his memory stopped and now he only retains memories for 80 minutes. So every 80 minutes, he meets the housekeeper for the first time. In spite of this limitation, the e housekeeper comes to understand the professor's deep love of math.
There was something profound in his love for math. And it helped that he forgot what he’d taught me before, so I was free to repeat the same question until I understood. Things that most people would get the first time around might take me five, or even ten times, but I could go on asking the Professor to explain until I finally got it.When the professor learns that the housekeeper has a young son, he insists that she bring him with her to work -- he writes a note to himself so he won't forget. The relationship between the three is charming and touching, developing slowly through small outings and events. It's a sweet novel, and I'm going to check out Ogawa's other translated work, a collection of short stories called The Diving Pool.
