Ms Ice Sandwich: Mieko Kawakami (Japanese Novellas)

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The young boy’s imaginary musings gradually give way to a more grounded reality, but one that still has room for flights of fancy in night time dreams. Ultimately, this book did not shy away from the 'quirkiness' that is so prevalent in contemporary Japanese writing, yet it is always compelling and thought-provoking. There’s also more to it like his relationship with his grandma, strange things going on at home and his best friend Tutti at school. Another issue this short novella tackles is, of course, difference and how people and the society deal with people who are "different".

We are also introduced to some other really interesting charachters such as Ms Ice Sandwhich and of course the loveable Tutti. But life has a way of interfering – there is his mother, forever distracted, who can tell the fortunes of women; his grandmother, silently dying, who listens to his heart; and his classmate, Tutti, no stranger to pain, who shares her private thrilling world with him.

Not having read the original, I cannot know whether that was a feature of the original text itself or whether it was the translator's magic, but I was quite satisfied with it. in this glimpse (and i do mean glimpse, as this is like 7 pages long) we got very little of our protagonist's mother or his grandmother, or his life really at all, but maybe that was the point. He goes as far as to insist that if you’re really thinking of making the other person feel good/happy, then it’s not really a romantic infatuation. The women in his life - an aging grandmother, a distracted mother, an audacious female friend, the Ms. There is so much involved with growing up, from sorting out one’s own feelings, and trying to keep negatively influenced by others’.

I enjoyed the almost stream-of-consciousness way in which the book was written, and overall, found it rather a thought-provoking story.A friend casually told me once when we were out drinking (pre-Covid) about how he thinks high-school (romantic) relationships ‘don’t count’ as proper relationships. In particular about how it’s a very selfish act, and it has to do more with oneself than the other person. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing. I’m thinking about all these things as I try to keep watching all the action and confusion on the screen. The boy becomes obsessed with a young lady who sells sandwiches at the supermarket — because of her huge eye lined in blue.