April 5, 2021
Japanese author Imamura invites the reader to become a voyeur of the everyday in her graceful English-language debut, in which plot takes a backseat to character study. The lonely, self-deprecating narrator, who refers to herself as the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan in contrast to the novel’s eponymous subject of her obsession, watches the woman’s daily public routines and describes them in minute, adulatory detail, expressing her desire for friendship while failing to approach more closely than leaving magazines with job listings circled near the woman’s habitual park bench. Lines between public and private blend as the narrator guides the woman to a housekeeping job at the hotel where she works, and tails her to glimpse snippets of her secret personal life. The narrator’s intense one-way nonsexual desire creates an off-balance frisson of strangeness in which the focused energy expended by her contrasts with the woman’s charmed-life obliviousness, and an inherently dull existence becomes infused with the power of fascination. Psychological thrillers fans who appreciate subtlety should take a look.
May 15, 2021
A best-selling award winner in Japan, this translated work comes to the U.S. with accolades from Paula Hawkins and Oyinkan Braithwaite. The short, unsettling novel opens with the narrator--whom readers learn very little about beyond her occupation as a hotel housekeeper--watching the Woman in the Purple Skirt. The titular Woman, who sits in the park every day and entertains the neighborhood children, is the focus of the narrator's attention. The narrator, who dubs herself the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, is fascinated by the Woman in the Purple Skirt and would do anything to get close to her. The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan manipulates the Woman in the Purple Skirt into getting a job at the same hotel, but when the Woman in the Purple Skirt falls for the boss, the narrator's jealousy leads her in an unexpected direction. Imamura's spare, intense prose calls to mind Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman (2018) with an extra edge of danger. With so little detail, the reader's imagination fills in the blanks of the narrator's obsession.
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May 15, 2021
One woman obsessively tracks the movements of another. The narrator of Japanese novelist Imamura's deliciously creepy English-language debut likes to watch a woman in her neighborhood known as "the Woman in the Purple Skirt." The Woman in the Purple Skirt doesn't do anything particularly interesting. She sits on a bench in the park; she goes to the bakery; she is intermittently employed. But there's something about her that makes it "impossible not to pay attention," as the narrator explains. "Nobody could ignore her." The same isn't true of the narrator, who refers to herself as "the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan." Gradually, as Imamura's taut narrative unfolds, we realize just how much of her own life the narrator is willing to give up or, indeed, destroy for the sake of her obsession. She arranges for the Woman in the Purple Skirt to get a job at the hotel where she works cleaning rooms. They've never actually spoken, but our narrator imagines she'll now get the chance to introduce herself. Instead, the Woman in the Purple Skirt quickly becomes popular with the cliquey other workers, and the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan remains as invisible as ever. Meanwhile, she keeps following the Woman in the Purple Skirt: listening in on her conversations, tracking her purchases, and waiting outside her apartment. Imamura's pacing is as deft and quick as the best thrillers, but her prose is also understated and quietly subtle. Occasionally the dialogue can feel somewhat canned: "She's quick about her work," one of the other hotel workers says, and the response is, "Uh-huh. She sure is." Still, this is a minor complaint of a novel that is, overall, a resounding success. A subtly ominous story about voyeurism and the danger of losing yourself in someone else.
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