{"product_id":"ms-ice-sandwich-isbn-9781782276722","title":"Ms Ice Sandwich","description":"\u003cb\u003eA witty, moving story of adolescent love and loss from the acclaimed, prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eBreasts and Eggs\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Haruki  Murakami listed Kawakami as his favourite young writer, so you're going  to want to snatch up this lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who  becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches” — \u003ci\u003eBustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In her English language debut, “ceaselessly growing and evolving”novelist Mieko Kawakami renders an adolsecent voice with laser precision (Haruki Murakami).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Ms  Ice Sandwich” is a name I made up, of course. I thought of it the  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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket  sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there.  Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most  intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants  nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches  into bags.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the complexities of life keep getting in the way –  his beloved grandmother's illness is only getting worse, and his mother  seems to be totally ignoring it. There’s also his faltering friendship  with his classmate Tutti. As she invites him to join her in thrilling  games and fantasy, the boy begins to enter a whole new world of  imagination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, \u003ci\u003eMs Ice Sandwich\u003c\/i\u003e is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.\u003cb\u003eOne of John Freeman's 29 Writers to Watch\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Whimsical… Described as Haruki Murakami’s “favorite young novelist,” Kawakami is destined to charm Anglophone audiences as well.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mieko Kawakami is a master of the novella. . . A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, it is no overstatement to assert that \u003ci\u003eMs Ice Sandwich\u003c\/i\u003e is Mieko Kawakami at her very best. . . Very highly recommended.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Midwest Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Delightful… Kawakami’s dialogue, fluidly rendered into English by Louise Heal Kawai, captures beautifully and with great humor the eager dynamism of a child’s mind.\" \u003cb\u003e— World Literature Today\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A subtle and endearing novella with a sweet sense of humor. Kawakami touches on loss, societal perceptions, first loves and new beginnings through the eyes of a grade-school boy and his relationships with the women closest to him.\" \u003cb\u003e--Sara S., Vroman’s Bookstores\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mieko Kawakami’s 2008 novel \u003ci\u003eBreasts \u0026amp; Eggs\u003c\/i\u003e won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The reissued novella \u003ci\u003eMs Ice Sandwich\u003c\/i\u003e... is a delightful distraction, and an appetiser for her work.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e— The Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A touching novella. . . Poignant.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eCulture Trip\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Easily digestible…a book that ultimately lives longer in the memory than the hour or so it takes to read.\" — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Among many other awards, Haruki Murakami listed Mieko Kawakami as his favorite young writer, so you're obviously going to want to snatch up \u003ci\u003eMs. Ice Sandwich, \u003c\/i\u003eher first book translated into English. This is a lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Bustle\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In Louise Heal Kawai’s translation, the novella is a wonderful example of the power of narrative voice.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e Japan Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Reading this quirky coming of age novella was one of the best hours I've spent in sometime.\" — \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Word’s Shortlist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e (blog)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Haruki Murakami’s favourite young writer. . . a funny, touching story.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Life in Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMieko Kawakami was born in Osaka in 1976. Her first break was as a singer, making her major-label debut in 2002 and going on to release three albums. Eventually she branched out into writing, first submitting poems to literary magazines and then winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008. In 2010 she received the MEXT Award for New Artists and the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize for her first full-length novel \u003ci\u003eHeaven. \u003c\/i\u003eShe is the author of the novel \u003ci\u003eBreasts and Eggs\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally from Manchester, UK, Louise Heal Kawai has lived in Japan for about 25 years and been a translator of Japanese literature for the past 10. Her translations include the bestselling memoir \u003ci\u003eYakuza Moon\u003c\/i\u003e by Shoko Tendo, the ground-breaking feminist Taeko Tomioka novel \u003ci\u003eBuilding Waves\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Quiet Place\u003c\/i\u003e by the mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto. \u003ci\u003eMs Ice Sandwich\u003c\/i\u003e is her second Mieko Kawakami translation.two-hundred-thirteen to Florida, three-hundred-twenty\u003cbr\u003e to polite, three-hundred-eighty to church medicine,\u003cbr\u003e four-hundred-fifteen to choco skip, four-hundred-\u003cbr\u003e thirty to your forties, vegetable boots is always\u003cbr\u003e five-hundred. Five-hundred-twelve is a gravestone for\u003cbr\u003e rain; the big cat bench where all the girls like to hang\u003cbr\u003e out in the evenings is six-hundred-seven.\u003cbr\u003e If someone speaks to me I lose count, so I keep my\u003cbr\u003e head down and try not to catch anyone’s eye. Sometimes\u003cbr\u003e there’s a crack in the white line I’m following, and\u003cbr\u003e sometimes it breaks off for a bit, but I keep my concentration,\u003cbr\u003e and the soles of my trainers land spot-on the\u003cbr\u003e line and I do it with a steady rhythm. Seven-hundred-thirty-\u003cbr\u003e one is souvenirs, eight-hundred-twenty, wait a\u003cbr\u003e minute, wait a minute, eight-hundred-eighty a famous\u003cbr\u003e writer, and nine-hundred-twelve a French person. At\u003cbr\u003e this point it’s suddenly crowded, full of people, and\u003cbr\u003e bicycles are lined up like mechanical goats.\u003cbr\u003e The automatic doors open and out pour people\u003cbr\u003e holding white plastic shopping bags stuffed with food.\u003cbr\u003e I guess they’re on their way home. Most of them are\u003cbr\u003e grown-ups. One in five has bought those leeks with\u003cbr\u003e their green tops poking out, and the bags look like\u003cbr\u003e they’re about to burst. Just as I’m thinking how most\u003cbr\u003e of the stuff they’ve bought is going to be put in their\u003cbr\u003e mouths, I’m surprised by people saying \u003ci\u003ehello, good evening\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e to me. I say it back. Then, careful not to bump into\u003cbr\u003e anyone, on to the potato zone, nine-hundred-thirty.\u003cbr\u003e And then always, without fail, it’s nine-hundred-fifty\u003cbr\u003e exactly to Ms Ice Sandwich.\u003cbr\u003e The cheapest sandwich you can buy there is the egg\u003cbr\u003e sandwich. There are two to a pack, but they’re superthin,\u003cbr\u003e and I come every day, or every other day, to buy\u003cbr\u003e them. If Mum sends me to the supermarket, I can pay\u003cbr\u003e for my sandwich with her money, so I like to hang\u003cbr\u003e around the house hoping she’ll ask me to go shopping\u003cbr\u003e for her, but sometimes I have to use my own pocket\u003cbr\u003e money. I get one hundred yen a day five times a week,\u003cbr\u003e Monday to Friday, and I make sure I put half of it in\u003cbr\u003e my coin purse. My sandwich money. To tell the truth,\u003cbr\u003e I don’t even like sandwiches that much; in fact, for\u003cbr\u003e meals I definitely like rice instead of bread, and for\u003cbr\u003e a snack it’s much better to buy a big bag of crisps or\u003cbr\u003e something, and eat them really slowly one piece at a\u003cbr\u003e time, and anyway, I never really get that hungry. I get\u003cbr\u003e full after I’ve eaten about half of my school lunch, and\u003cbr\u003e that might be why I’m so skinny and I don’t seem to be\u003cbr\u003e getting any taller. But I can’t help it if I don’t like what\u003cbr\u003e they serve. Mum got so worried she came to school\u003cbr\u003e and showed my teacher how skinny my arms were for\u003cbr\u003e a boy, but now that I think about it, that was ages ago,\u003cbr\u003e and it seems like she’s forgotten all about it by now,\u003cbr\u003e or maybe she’s just given up, or maybe the moment’s\u003cbr\u003e passed, or that’s what it feels like.\u003cbr\u003e Around the train station, there’s only the chemist’s\u003cbr\u003e and the level crossing and the supermarket that are lit\u003cbr\u003e up at night. But to be honest there’s not much there\u003cbr\u003e in the daytime either—this town is really just made\u003cbr\u003e up of houses, and the top floor of that two-storey\u003cbr\u003e supermarket is full of laundry detergent and buckets\u003cbr\u003e and dishes and toilet paper, all those things that’s not\u003cbr\u003e food, and the meat and the vegetables and yogurt and\u003cbr\u003e fish and stuff is all on the ground floor, and everyone\u003cbr\u003e in the town comes here nearly every day to buy what\u003cbr\u003e they need. I watch Ms Ice Sandwich from the only door\u003cbr\u003e in and out of the supermarket; she’s always standing\u003cbr\u003e behind a big round glass case, just to the left and a\u003cbr\u003e little bit behind the cash registers, with that look on\u003cbr\u003e her face that’s like a mixture of surprise and boredom,\u003cbr\u003e as she’s selling sandwiches and salads and bread and\u003cbr\u003e things like that.\u003cbr\u003e “Ms Ice Sandwich” is a name I made up; of course,\u003cbr\u003e I thought of it the minute I first saw her. Ms Ice\u003cbr\u003e Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick\u003cbr\u003e layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour\u003cbr\u003e as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our\u003cbr\u003e freezer since last summer. There’s one more awesome\u003cbr\u003e thing about her—if you watch when she looks down,\u003cbr\u003e there’s a sharp dark line above her eyes, as if when\u003cbr\u003e she closed her eyes, someone started to draw on two\u003cbr\u003e extra eyes with a felt-tip pen but stopped halfway. It’s\u003cbr\u003e the coolest thing. And then when she looks straight\u003cbr\u003e at me, she has these enormous eyes which are so big I\u003cbr\u003e feel like I get swallowed up in them. They look exactly\u003cbr\u003e like the great big eyes of the dogs that I read about in\u003cbr\u003e a storybook long ago… What is the title of that book?\u003cbr\u003e Well, it’s not only the title that I’ve forgotten, I can’t\u003cbr\u003e even remember what happens in the story, but I do\u003cbr\u003e remember the faces of the dogs with their gigantic\u003cbr\u003e eyes; it must have been a children’s picture book or\u003cbr\u003e something… Anyway, Ms Ice Sandwich has eyes just\u003cbr\u003e like those dogs do in that story, which has a soldier in it,\u003cbr\u003e and a castle, and there’s a princess—\u003ci\u003ethat \u003c\/i\u003estory. The dogs\u003cbr\u003e with the giant eyes run around like crazy everywhere.\u003cbr\u003e Where was it they came from? And then someone got\u003cbr\u003e married to someone else, or they didn’t get married, I\u003cbr\u003e forget what the story was about.\u003cbr\u003e The day I first saw Ms Ice Sandwich, I was with Mum,\u003cbr\u003e but when I said out loud in surprise, \u003ci\u003eLook at her eyes!\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003cbr\u003e Mum pretended not to hear me and started talking\u003cbr\u003e about something totally different, and it wasn’t until\u003cbr\u003e we’d paid for our shopping and got completely outside\u003cbr\u003e the supermarket that she started in on me. \u003ci\u003eYou have to\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003estop that! You cannot say things like that out loud, she can\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ehear you, it’s rude\u003c\/i\u003e. Mum’s face is awesome whenever\u003cbr\u003e she gets annoyed, if there was an animal that didn’t\u003cbr\u003e know what being annoyed meant, then just one look\u003cbr\u003e at my mum’s face and they’d get the idea. You could\u003cbr\u003e make a rubber stamp of Mum’s face as a demo. I say,\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWhy can’t I talk out loud about her eyes? They’re huge,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ethey’re amazing! \u003c\/i\u003eMum says, \u003ci\u003eIt doesn’t matter what they\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eare, it’s not proper to talk about other people’s faces. \u003c\/i\u003eMe:\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWhy? \u003c\/i\u003eHer: \u003ci\u003eBecause! \u003c\/i\u003eAll the way home I keep asking\u003cbr\u003e Mum \u003ci\u003ewhy\u003c\/i\u003e, but now she’s busy playing with her mobile\u003cbr\u003e phone and just keeps nodding and saying \u003ci\u003eyeah \u003c\/i\u003eevery\u003cbr\u003e so often. Well, I’m kind of getting used to her being\u003cbr\u003e like that these days, not paying attention to me, but\u003cbr\u003e the more we walk the more it bugs me, so I stop and\u003cbr\u003e say, \u003ci\u003eIf video games make you stupid, then what do mobile\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ephones do to you? \u003c\/i\u003e(This is me being real extreme to her.)\u003cbr\u003e She answers, \u003ci\u003eWhat?\u003c\/i\u003e, not stopping, \u003ci\u003eI’m not playing a\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003egame, I’m updating something. It’s work. It’s hot, can we\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ewalk faster? \u003c\/i\u003eAnd of course she hasn’t taken her eyes\u003cbr\u003e off the screen for a second, madly pressing buttons,\u003cbr\u003e keeps on walking.","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301998874853,"sku":"NP9781782276722","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782276722.jpg?v=1767733078","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/ms-ice-sandwich-isbn-9781782276722","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}