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. Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback. I thought Kawakami was going to lean towards a conventional pattern of childhood love/‘romance’ and was happily surprised when she doesn’t. It’s honestly amazing how well she handles this because it feels so authentic to the way a child will ramble as if they, themselves, are still trying to understand what it is they are getting at without the narrative style feeling like a gimmick all the while remaining cohesive.

Kawakami uses the theme of love and death in the novella very appropriately; and the narrative tone (which I usually do not like in her other novels) worked brilliantly in this one. Another aspect that really works is the way that the narrator feels all these feelings and thoughts but Kawakami details the frustration in attempting to take the helm of your own emotions when you still lack the emotional language and maturity that serves as a compass to express yourself to others.Her eyes are enormous, he says and compares them to illustrations of big-eyed dogs in a faintly remembered adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Tinderbox, and she wears blue eye makeup that reminds him of the ice cream sandwiches sold there. The plot itself might seem simple, but Mieko Kawakami succeeded in making the narrator’s voice a great balance of childish naivety and clear insight. This allows for a charming story that’s easy to read thanks to the superb translation by Louise Heal Kawai.

Myself being a fairly timid child that had no inclination to leave behind some of my more childish tastes in games, hobbies and movies around this age, I deeply felt his discomfort when he shows up for a movie night at Tutti’s house and she puts on the Al Pacino film Heat. In particular about how it’s a very selfish act, and it has to do more with oneself than the other person. Happy new year🎉🎄, my GR friends; I hope this year was gentle on you and that the new one brings you so many wonderful surprises 🎁.

He tells his grandmother all about her and draws pictures of her face, painting in the ice-blue eyelids. Wanting to do something for them, wanting to make them happy - things such as that aren't the essence of falling in love, I feel. This is yet another example of Kawakami’s strength as an author; her ability to comment on what is and has become normative in our society, and in turn what it has begun to neglect. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Ice Sandwich of the title - all come into clearer focus as the narrative moves along, both for him and for us.The only people who know about the boy's infatuation are his grandma, who is stuck in her bed, unable to move and to whom the protagonist often entrusts his deepest thoughts and feelings, and his best friend from school, Tutti, with who he seems to start developing a deeper relationship as the story progresses. Nothing very much happens but the writing effortlessly transports you back to the time you were ten years old and beginning to experience the familiar in a different way. I enjoyed the almost stream-of-consciousness way in which the book was written, and overall, found it rather a thought-provoking story.

There is so much involved with growing up, from sorting out one’s own feelings, and trying to keep negatively influenced by others’. I remember those moments when something such as, say, when I discovered that a band I enjoyed listening to with my Dad was considered very uncool by older classmates I wanted to impress and the discomfort of trying to process contradictory feelings. 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. The second book from Pushkin Press's Japanese Novellas series which I am going to review today is Ms Ice Sandwich by Kawakami Mieko (yes, she shares the same last name as Kawakami Hiromi whose Record of a Night Too Brief I reviewed last week, but the two authors have no relation whatsoever as far as I am concerned). He is in awe of her aloofness, her skill at slipping sandwiches into bags, and, most electric of all, her ice-blue eyelids.

Kawakami manages to conduct chaos here, keeping an astonishing control over a narrative composed of a deluge of thoughts. The women in his life - an aging grandmother, a distracted mother, an audacious female friend, the Ms. And when that happens, I'm going to tell myself I can't give in or freeze up and get discouraged and do nothing. The story touches on universal attitudes, the desire to belong, and the difficulties of conveying what is deeply felt.