Ms Ice Sandwich: Mieko Kawakami (Japanese Novellas)

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Kawakami’s novella also makes me wonder about the ways we engage/build relationships/friendships – and of the influence and importance of the environment we grow up in? And she goes on to talk about how even as a grown woman, there are certain moments, during the half-conscious moments of waking up from a deep sleep – in a sort of peaceful haze – that she almost forgets that she’s a ‘woman’. This is particularly because she seems to like him and they both share a common bond of the loss of a parent at a young age. To "fall in love" is fundamentally lonely, thinking things like "What can I do to get closer to them?

Something that really struck me about Ms Ice Sandwich was the way it thrust me back into the painfully awkward moments of self-revelation about existing in a larger society. Tutti offers him a place in her world, which he is grateful for even if he cannot match her enthusiasm for her interests. His innocent infatuation drives him to visit her sandwich stand every so often just so he can catch a glimpse of her face.So, with this thought in mind, the protagonist in the novel was figuring out his own feelings about the world around him through his strange attraction/ mild obsession with the sandwich seller. She is fascinated by the gunfights, which he finds to be overly violent and her glee makes him uncomfortable. Overall, Ms Ice Sandwich is a very heart-warming and quiet novella about growing up, first love, loss and learning to cope with all these new feelings which inundate kids at that age all of a sudden. Unlike in Paterson’s novel, Bridge to Terabithia, the primary friendship in the story wasn’t cruelly side-lined or taken advantage of as a stepping stone to a ‘romantic’ endeavour.

I’m thinking about all these things as I try to keep watching all the action and confusion on the screen. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. This is an excellent depiction of childhood and all its chaotic beauty that has all the heart and quirkyness to really dig into the soul of the reader and make them empathize and reconsider their own experiences. Finally the gunfight ends and the car drives away, and then all of a sudden it’s a completely different scene and Tutti lets out a big sigh, grabs the remote, and pauses the DVD.In this novella she captures extremely well the interior musings of a young adolescent coming to realizations about the true nature of the human condition. I felt how much the contact with Ms Ice Sandwich means to him, how confused he is when nobody else seems to see what he sees in her. These frustrations amalgamate and create friction in his relationships, especially with Tutti from whom he so desperately wants to be understood.

I enjoyed the almost stream-of-consciousness way in which the book was written, and overall, found it rather a thought-provoking story. I had the thought that to create a proper love song, you need to confront a certain kind of shallowness and selfishness. In one of Kawakami’s interviews available on YT, here , she was asked about her thoughts on female sexuality which I found quite complementary to the theme of adolescent ‘love’ in ‘Ms Ice Sandwich’.Personally, I think it’s never too young to love (to be clear – not referring to anything sexual – that’s a whole other discussion). His nonnormative home life, within which his tribulations seem only amplified, finds a gentle, liberating resonance with Tutti’s equally unusual home life focused on films.

Her Breasts and Eggs left me with very mixed feelings, but luckily this one exceeded my expectations. Yet this light banter resolves itself, slowly, into a poignant consideration of relationships and their fragility.I remember lamenting how I couldn't get anything out of The Woman in the Purple Skirt, but this book has successfully presented me with another perspective on Japanese literature. However, the person our protagonist is most drawn to is 'Ms Ice Sandwich', the woman who prepares sandwiches at the counter in his local supermarket. This little gem of a novella covers a lot of emotional territory and does all of it to near perfection. People always forget about these little things, but I believe that each one stays somewhere deep in everyone’s heart, and without noticing it they grow and harden, until one day they cause something terrible to happen.