Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.25

/ madamebibilophile

Ms Ice Sandwich – Mieko Kawakami (2013 trans. Louise Heal Kawai 2017) 92 pages

A nine-year old boy tells the story of a short period of time where he has a crush on the young woman who works at the sandwich shop in the local shopping centre. He never speaks to her but lines up to stare at her and buy a sandwich.

“‘Ms Ice Sandwich’ is a name I made-up, of course. I thought of it 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. There’s one more awesome thing about her – if you watch when she looks down, there’s a sharp dark line above her eyes, as if when she closed her eyes, someone started to draw on two extra eyes with a felt-tip pen but stopped halfway. It’s the coolest thing.”

The story could so easily be creepy or at least unnerving but it really isn’t. He’s young, quite lonely, and navigating that period of older childhood as friends change and he tries to work out who he is. His mother is distracted, his elderly grandmother is extremely frail, and his father has died.

Child narrators are so difficult to get right, but I really thought Kawakami pulled it off. The boy uses the striking imagery that children sometimes access “Bicycles are lined up like mechanical goats.” without it feeling too knowing for someone of his age. I thought this was done especially well when he is trying to describe his feelings for Ms Ice Sandwich:

“Like when you’re holding a cat and you touch it soft belly. Or sticking your finger in a jar of jam and stirring, then slowly sinking in all the rest of your fingers. Or licking the sweet condensed milk at the bottom of your bowl of strawberries. Or when a blanket brushes the top of your feet. Or when butter turns transparent when it melts over your pancakes. As I stand gazing at Ms Ice Sandwich, all of these things are happening to me, one on top of the other, right there.”

The boy doesn’t try to build a relationship with Ms Ice Sandwich and I think it would have lessened the story if he did. Instead we see his gently burgeoning friendship with classmate Tutti, who is also bereaved for a parent, and some very touching scenes between him and his grandma, so delicately realised.

“The little bit of golden sun that shines through the shoji screens on the window lights up the white areas of Grandma’s quilt, making a faint shadow of leaves, and each time the wind blows outside, the shadow pattern of leaves shakes a little bit. I go over to Grandma and I hold my breath for a moment. The room goes very quiet.”

Ms Ice Sandwich captures a particular time in a young boy’s life with sensitivity and compassion. By capturing ordinary moments between people so precisely it demonstrates something universal that carries far beyond childhood.

25 thoughts on “Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.25”

  3. Child narrators ARE so hard to get right, though wonderful when they are (I think the best I’ve read was James Schuyler’s Alfred and Guinevere). I’m interested by this one, though those bite marks on the ice lolly on the cover make my teeth hurt in sympathy 😀

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  13. Pingback: “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day.” (Vincent Van Gogh) | madame bibi lophile recommends

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