Very much in the same slightly unsettling/quirky/offbeat style as, say, Sayaka Murata, this short novel will grip you to the point that you just have to read on to find out what is going on. The fact that it also won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2019 means that this first available English translation is noteworthy.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is being watched, and the book is written from the point of view of her 'stalker', The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. We see how the central character, Mayuko Hiro, is unknowingly helped by her watcher, who leaves out job adverts for her on her favourite bench. She ends up getting a job with the same company, and her watcher gets the same bus as her every day, but Mayuko is completely unaware of her and what is going on. As the book develops, crucial social boundaries are crossed and a darker truth emerges about Mayuko and her relationship with a man. We also start to learn more about the narrator, which slowly adds a different perspective on the events of the novel.

This is an intriguing book, one which will test the reader's sympathies and is not afraid to pull the rug from under you. Like much Japanese fiction it is understated and subtle, and it left me with a slightly uneasy feeling by the end that I hadn't quite grasped all the nuances. Definitely one that I will be going back to re-read. 4.5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Most days, the Woman in the Purple Skirt buys a cream bun and sits on the same bench in the park. Every day, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, another single woman, watches her every move and has a secret desire to befriend her. Eventually, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan manages to get the Woman in the Purple Skirt a job in the same hotel housekeeping team as herself but the Woman in the Purple Skirt is certainly more noticeable and more interesting to their colleagues than the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan has ever been. I have a special love for the strangeness but relatability of contemporary Japanese novels and this fits that bill perfectly. There are themes of envy, misogyny and manipulation as well as commentary on the apparent dangers for unattached women. It’s a very unique story with some darkly funny parts, told in a voyeuristic style that is always fascinating to read.

I think that the idea of this book was super interesting. It is a short story about obsession narrated by the lady in the yellow cardigan about the woman in the purple skirt. Because of this I found the book to be slower paced, and did struggle a bit to finish it. However it was an interesting short read and had me thinking about a lot of different things as well as leaving me with quite a few questions!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC.

Halfway between thriller and a comedy, The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a tale of a stalked told by the eyes of the stalker, who manipulates her life in order to find friendship in her. Creepy reading but which hides more than what it seems in plain sight.

A rather unsettling novel around obsession, focusing on the ordinary and mundane aspects of life The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a really fascinating book where not much happens - but you're ever so hooked on what isn't happening.

This is a very strange story. It didn't seem to be going anywhere but I couldn't put it down as I had to know what happened. I wasn't disappointed. Read it if you like off the wall fiction.

Intriguing. With every word and every page, this book sucked me right in.

My initial thought was that the narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan was perhaps the Woman in the Purple Skirt's inner thoughts and an internal monologue was taking place, but I was wrong. The narrator is obsessed by the Woman in the Purple Skirt. The narrator knows her obsession's quirky routines and cleverly orchestrates a way for the Woman in the Purple Skirt to get a job at the same work place as her.

At her new workplace, the reader finds out more about the Woman in the Purple Skirt's character and the narrator's increasing obsession.

Brilliantly written, the novel is dark and there is suspense throughout, along with some dry humour at times. It is simultaneously compelling and disturbing. Despite the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan's identity being revealed, the ending left me with a lot of questions about both protagonists.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a story of obsession. It is told through the eyes of the woman in the yellow cardigan who watches the woman in the purple skirt. The woman in the purple skirt lives alone, and has a very specific daily routine, which the woman in the yellow cardigan follows closely. You see the life of the woman in the purple skirt through her stalkers eyes, and watch her stalker manipulate things for the woman in the purple skirt, bending her life to suit her will.

It was fascinating and I read most of it in one night. I would've finished it then too, if I didn't need to sleep. It was a great little slice of life meets psychological thriller. It was a slow pace, and nothing was action-packed, but that's what I enjoyed about it. It had very atmospheric writing and I appreciated it for that. I can't wait to pick up more from this author and see what else she has to offer.

Thank you to the pubisher, the author and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 rounded down

I'm really not sure what to make of this. There will be inevitable comparisons to Convenience Store Woman (workplace setting, solitary and odd/misfit female character and a discomfiting narrative) which are mostly fair, but I found this a lot less satisfying of a read and don't feel like I really 'got' it. The dialogue felt kind of awkward (a translation issue?) and I struggled to see what the novel was trying to say - it's essentially one woman (the woman in the yellow cardigan) following another woman (the woman in the purple skirt), observing her behaviour and trying to help her gain some semblance of normality in her life through helping her get a settled job and using some odd methods to make her more presentable and acceptable in the eyes of society. Not bad, just not one which will stay with me.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a short, weird and engaging story told by our stalker, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. She follows almost every step of the woman in the purple skirt, observes her daily life and her habits, and tries to influence her from the distance. In the beginning, you might think the woman in the purple skirt is an odd creature, but this will slowly change.

It is a very short book, and some would think that it doesn’t really have a plot, you will experience how the aura shifts slowly, how characters change. And although it definitely has its funny elements the more the story progresses the more unsettling it gets, and the more you want to know. The ending is also very nicely ties the whole book together. And the writing is just so gripping, it makes it nearly impossible to put the book down.

It is a quirky and unsettling story about obsession and loneliness, which I would definitely recommend, especially if you like Japanese fiction.

4.5 rounded up to 5

Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for my e-arc of this book, received in exchange for an honest review.

Someone is watching the woman in the purple skirt, taking note of her every move ...does she have a stalker? Or is something else at play?

For me, this book didn't live up to what the description led me to expect. While there were elements I enjoyed, such as the often dry sense of humour of our narrator and her way of describing the world around her, ultimately I struggled to get invested in the story. I found myself wondering when (if ever) it was going to get to the twist that was hinted, or any real point in the narrative. By the time it did get there it was a bit predictable and not entirely fleshed out the way it could have been, in my opinion.
And while it may have been that certain phrases get lost in translation, some of the dialogue didn't read very naturally to me which took me out of the story.

All in all, it was a quick read and I probably would have enjoyed it more if the description had been different.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a story of psychological intrigue surrounding stalking, obsession and manipulation which, despite its serious theme, does not lack a special subtle Japanese humour, in which the reader sometimes laughs, but this is never without a melancholic undertone and is written by the winner of multiple prestigious Japanese literary awards. The enigmatic Woman in the Purple Skirt is of indeterminate age, lives alone, does not relate to anyone, has temporary jobs and is the entertainment of the neighbourhood. It's probably because of that purple skirt that she never takes off of her and because she always follows the same routines. People notice her when she leaves the house and children who play in the street chase and insult her. This woman has a special talent: she can walk through crowds without touching anyone, and many have tried to "accidentally" run into her without succeeding. Almost every afternoon, the Woman in the Purple Skirt (tWitPS) buys a single cream brioche and goes to the park in an unnamed Japanese city, where she returns to the same bench to eat it as the local children taunt her and compete for her attention. She is observed at all times by the undetected narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan who checks what she eats, where she goes and who she encounters. She watches her, constantly, day after day. She knows her every waking move from dawn until dusk. From a distance, the tWitPS looks like a schoolgirl, but there are age spots on her face, and her hair is dry and stiff. Like the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, she is single, she lives in a small, run-down apartment, and she is short on money.

The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan lures her to a job, under the pretence of wanting to be her friend, where she herself works, as a hotel housekeeper at a cleaning agency; soon twitPS is having an affair with the boss. And here is where the two women’s paths finally intersect dramatically and unpredictably. Unfortunately, no one knows or cares about the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. That's the difference between her and tWitPS. Who are these two women really, whose only common traits seem to be precariousness and loneliness? This is a scintillating, enthralling and compulsively readable thriller with creepiness simply oozing from its pages and the slightly surreal aura Japanese stories often exude, which I love. It's a novel with high doses of humour that explores vulnerability and the difficulty of finding one's own place when one is different. The subtle and disturbing tale of an obsession, a story that, in a crescendo of tension, gradually takes on the tones of the thriller, in a spiral of unexpressed desires, loneliness, dynamics of female power and condition, a desperate desire to be visible, to be considered and loved. The cast of characters is small but this is perfect as it allows the focus to be solely on the two women at the centre of the story; they are both idiosyncratic, multidimensional and fascinating to read about and I read with more and more urgency to uncover why they were the way they were. Studiously deadpan, highly original, and unsettling, tWitPS explores the dynamics of envy, the mechanisms of power in the workplace and the vulnerability of unmarried women in a taut, voyeuristic narrative about the sometimes desperate desire to be seen. Highly recommended.

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a short, weird, voyeuristic novel narrated by The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, who has an unhealthy fascination with Ms Purple Skirt. Yellow closely observes Purple’s life, watching her eat a daily cream bun on a park bench and monitoring her comings and goings. Yellow tries to influence Purple’s behaviour from a distance and engineers scenarios to try to contact Purple and initiate friendship.

At first, the reader thinks that Purple Skirt is a quirky and odd character, but we slowly come to realise that Yellow Cardigan is much, much stranger.

A quick, quirky read - recommended!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

The woman in the purple skirt lives a life obsessively marked by rituals. Once a week she goes to the park and always sits on the same bench in the park and eats the same cream bun. She looks like a girl but on closer inspection her hair is dry and her skin marked. We know everything about her from the woman in the yellow cardigan, her neighbour and our narrator, who is obsessed with her to the point of following her everywhere: after all the woman is the purple skirts is apparently noticed by everyone, or at least everyone seems to react to her, while the woman in the yellow cardigan is declaredly invisible. All our narrator wants is befriend the woman in the purple skirt, and she eerily manages to manipulate various situations to get closer to her. Through some manoeuvring, to this purpose the woman in the yellow cardigan, who works as a housekeeper in a luxury hotel, ensures that the other woman gets the same job in the same hotel. As the newcomer is promoted and starts an affair with the director gossip starts to spread….

A surreal novella on modern solitude and alienation where individuals are reduced to synecdoche, and a powerful commentary on what it means to be a woman in contemporary society which, in a clean prose marked by wry humour, continues the conversation started by Mieko Kawakami and Sayaka Murata. We might view the two protagonists as embodying the condition of women in modern society, or we might even consider one as the double or projection of the other (after all, they are often to be found in the same place, cardigan is complementary to skirt and the narrator recognizes a certain likeness). Both live precarious lives with suffocatingly narrow options, either unemployed or employed in a dehumanising environment where a woman is targeted as object of gossip, envy or desire or humiliated and vilified, when she is not utterly invisible.

Only children in the park seem to acknowledge the woman in the purple skirt as an individual, and she engages with them in liberating play and talk which offers escape from the rules of a hyper-capitalistic, regimented adult world. It is thanks to the children that the novel turns from claustrophobic to uplifting and redeeming in unexpected ways. Deservedly winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

"The Woman In The Purple Skirt" by Natsuko Imamura is beautifully translated to English by Lucy North. It's a strangely compelling short read about obsession, envy, stalking and the fleeting nature of adulation. The book raises more questions than it answers and is an undoubtedly odd, yet enjoyable, example of Japanese literature.

This is a weird novel. It's been compared to Convenience Store Woman, and I can see why - a lone woman, odd characters, most of the action taking place in a work environment (a hotel in this case). This one felt just as cryptic at times, and somehow mysterious but I thought it also lacked some depth. It is hard to figure out the characters, in a way the narrator (Yellow Cardigan Woman) and the co-worker she observes and stalks, The Woman in the Purple Skirt, are equivalent and feel interchangeable. It was definitely an enjoyable (and quick) read, but I don't know that there was enough substance in it to make it particularly memorable.

I really dont know what in the world I just read, but it had me gripped, questioning my sanity and totally engrossed.

The woman in the purple skirt is quite something else, and my goodness the woman in the yellow cardigan is an absolute bizarre appearance.

I finished this book in a day, yes it is a short read but still, the weirder it got the more I needed to find out what happens next.

This story centres on the subject of the woman in the purple skirt. Everyday she sits on the same park bench, eats a pastry and is watched from afar by our narrator. The woman in the purple skirt is mocked by school children and whispered about by locals. She is the obsession of the narrator who monitors the buses she takes, the people she speaks to, what time she is at home, where she works; her every movement is mapped. However this observer is not a stalker, it is much more complicated. Part thriller, Natsuko Imamura’s book is a page-turner.

The novel begins with the observation of the woman in the purple skirt and what she represents. She is an outsider and a notable oddity in her community. Over the time, the focus shifts from the woman in the purple skirt to that of the narrator. Why are they so obsessed? The narrator’s extreme fascination and desire to control her subject’s life soon becomes messy.

Although a short book, it is a tightly packed story which becomes more unsettling as it progresses. The story is in first person narrative and Imamura artfully makes the reader feel uncomfortable as they too have to hide in the bushes and spy on the woman in the purple skirt.

I adored this book and devoured it over a couple of days. This is for fans of Sayaka Murata, Cho Nam-Joo and Bae Suah. Like the authors in the previous sentence, Imamura constructs a tightly woven narrative that artfully shifts into absurdity and disquiet.

I did guess how the novel would end but that is not a disappointment. I love it when I can see the pieces of a story and watch the author tie it together. It means it is well crafted. A short and powerful story which I think will be a new favourite for many.

3.5*

A woman in a purple skirt and a woman in a yellow cardigan are the two main characters of this novella. One is being watched and the other one is doing the watching. What unfolds in the 200 something pages of this book is a strange and full of unanswered questions narrative that tries to give us a bit of insight into the mind of stalkers.

While I've appreciated the underlying strangeness of the story and enjoyed trying to come up with answers to the many 'why' the narrative left me with, ultimately there is not enough substance to make this more than an odd, enjoyable, easy read!

The Woman in the Purple Skirt starts out as a quirky story about a seemingly eccentric woman who has caught the attention of our narrator. However as the book goes on it gets stranger and darker, and becomes a study in obsession. It is darkly amusing at times but ultimately it's quite a sad and tense story that explores loneliness in modern day Japan. A strange, quiet novel that really packs a punch.