Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A quixotic and funny tale about first love - from the Akutagawa Prize-winning author.
A boy is obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches. He goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at her face. She is beautiful to him, and he calls her "Ms Ice Sandwich", and endlessly draws her portrait.
But the boy's friend hears about this hesitant adoration, and suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, and with them the last hopes of his childhood.
A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, Ms Ice Sandwich is Mieko Kawakami at her very best.
Synopsis
A witty, moving story of adolescent love and loss from the acclaimed, prize-winning author of Breasts and Eggs "Haruki Murakami listed Kawakami as his favourite young writer, so you're going to want to snatch up this lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches" -- Bustle
In her English language debut, "ceaselessly growing and evolving"novelist Mieko Kawakami renders an adolsecent voice with laser precision (Haruki Murakami).
"Ms Ice Sandwich" is a name I made up, of course. I thought of it the minute I first saw her. Ms Ice Sandwich's eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer.
A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags.
But the complexities of life keep getting in the way - his beloved grandmother's illness is only getting worse, and his mother seems to be totally ignoring it. There's also his faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti. As she invites him to join her in thrilling games and fantasy, the boy begins to enter a whole new world of imagination.
Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.