Book Review
Title: Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 4 Stars
I didn’t know anything about Ms Ice Sandwich but it is a book that keeps getting recommended to me and since it is really short I decided to pick it up. We don’t follow a named protagonist but he is obsessed with a girl working at the grocery store who he calls Ms Ice Sandwich as she works on the sandwich counter. He makes a point of going to the store everyday to buy a sandwich for her just so he can see her and her electric blue eyeshadow, however, the boy is only 9 which is interesting. We also get to see the protagonist’s friend including a young girl named Tutti, who seems to take pleasure in bullying the boy but we know that is a childish outlet for emotions that they don’t know how to deal with. The protagonist is also dealing with an emotionally distant mother, a seemingly absent father and a grandmother who is dying which means he tries to focus on Ms Ice Sandwich in order to distract himself from the reality of his situation which is something that I can completely empathise with.
The boy continues to see Ms Ice Sandwich over the summer and even when he returns to school. However, it isn’t a sexual attraction for him but rather an aesthetic one as he likes the way she looks. However, one day in the supermarket he witnesses a man shouting at Ms Ice Sandwich and she doesn’t respond at all but the encounter scares the boy especially when he learns that Tutti’s dad is the manger of the supermarket. After this he stops visiting her and this only made worse when he realises that some of the girls are talking about Ms Ice Sandwich and they are saying horrible things but he can’t bring himself to say anything to them. At this point he hasn’t seen her in almost 8 days when he gets invited over to Tutti’s house to watch a movie. During the movie he realises how much Tutti loves these movies even though he finds them violent but he is in awe when she acts out the gunfight scene with precision because she has seen it so many times. He feels a connection with Tutti because she doesn’t have a mother, the same way he doesn’t have a father and he tells her a little about Ms Ice Sandwich but all he gathers from the conversation is that Tutti feels disappointed by the fact he admires her so much which we can see relates to what he mentioned earlier about certain people discussing who they like and who likes who but he doesn’t understand what this means yet.
In the aftermath of this Tutti and the boy don’t talk for a while until she comes to understand how he feels about Ms Ice Sandwich and tells him that he needs to see her again because you never know when the people you care about are going to be gone forever. When they arrive at the supermarket they realises that Ms Ice Sandwich has already gone and Tutti finds out that she doesn’t work there anymore and she is coming to pick up her things on Monday evening and encourage the boy to be there. Despite his reservations he does go to the store on Monday and actually talks to Ms Ice Sandwich for the first time where he gives her the portrait he has been working on for weeks and she tells him that she is leaving because she is getting married. After returning home the boy cries himself to sleep although he doesn’t understand why and during this night his grandmother dies. It is at the funeral that he finally begins to see Tutti in a different light and he briefly speaks about how they grew up and always remained friends but Ms Ice Sandwich held a special place in his heart. Overall, Ms Ice Sandwich was a quick and interesting novel told through the eyes of a child experiencing adult emotions like grief, abandonment and love for the first time and I would highly recommend it.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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