What a thrill! A kind of thrill that makes me … oh no oh shit oh why. The Woman in the Purple Skirt was not a nameless character, but the narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, made her so (and herself too). We saw the Purple Skirt woman from the narrator’s eyes–she acted like a stalker and/or an unheroic caregiver (mind the space between “care” and “giver”). She changed her object of spectacle, foreshadowing her movements until, in the final act, she lost her completely. The narrator’s last call to directly help the Purple Skirt Woman broke her long desire to make a friend.

Natsuko Imamura is such an effective writer. All scenes are seemingly mundane but they build a sort of creeping nuance around the stories. Children laughing and colleagues gossiping are uneasy and troubling because Imamura’s narrator was able to become this always-present, ghostly voice that is very visible to the readers but invisible to other characters. Even the side characters, they easily ignored the narrator. The tense conversations are also built up from the mid part of the novel and continue until the narrator finally spoke up about what she wanted.

Creepy, creeping loneliness. How much time do we spend viewing other people’s lives, afflicting joy and pain unto others, and knowing that others also do the same to us? Stalking physically, virtually. The narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, did not ask for understanding–she asked for a friend. But to what extent her acts can be justified? Where did her “obsession” to make a friend lead the Purple Skirt Woman?

But the story is also beyond such obsession. It’s about hierarchy, work conditions, horizontal petty jealousy and conflict, gender dynamics–in short, the structure that enables harmful acts and decisions. When we consider the narrator’s behavior as individual habits per se, we miss a chance to see the ground that holds them. What would we say about a growing empathy of watching someone being bullied? What would we say about close attention to a person without luck and privilege? The questions are more daring than the answers.

I truly enjoy this novel while realizing I haven’t read much fiction last year. This kind of story helps me re-finding the excitement of reading a good story. The novel might not have beautiful proses or mind-boggling sentences. But I really like the structure of the scenes and how Imamura builds the conflict. Also, the odd ending also makes me wonder about the real motif(s) of the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. It’s a good book to start a new year.