The Woman in the Purple Skirt (Book Review)

Author: Natsuko Imumura Page Length: 216

Publisher: Penguin Random House Publication Date: 2019 Translated from Japanese by Lucy North

Finished Reading: 12/1/2024

I came across this book shortly after reading Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. I did a deep dive into Japanese literature and The Woman in the Purple Skirt was topping some novella lists. I ended up picking up the book five or six times before I decided to stick it out through the end. Once I got into it, I finished quickly. 

I almost didn’t review this one. Even now as I write this, I’m still trying to figure out the novel's purpose, which feels like it could have been accomplished in a short story. And who would I recommend this book to? Other than those who are obsessed with obsession, I can’t imagine who the target audience is.

That’s not to say the book is bad, I actually liked it. I like the first-person point of view. I like the word usage and the way it flows. I like the subtle humor sprinkled throughout. I love that throughout the book I’m wondering if I’m more like the woman in the purple skirt, or the woman in the yellow cardigan. I like that the book has a lot of quotes I could reference in the future.

Let’s get into some details, and warning. From this point on there may be spoilers.

SPOILERS

Okay, so, this entire novel is a story of one woman who is absolutely obsessed with another woman. She follows her around everywhere, she takes notes on her daily life, she knows where she lives, what she eats, she knows her conversations. Every detail. The narrator, who is the woman in the yellow cardigan, essentially manipulates the woman in the purple skirt to get a job at the same place as the woman in the yellow cardigan. But here’s the thing. They never meet, they never talk, they never come face to face, until the director of the hotel where they work almost dies. The two women meet for a brief moment as the woman in the yellow cardigan helps the woman in the purple skirt get away, as if she loves this woman so profoundly, that she literally helps her get away with murder (except, he’s not actually dead). And then in the end of the novel, basically the last 60 pages or so, the story starts to come to some kind of conclusion.

The woman in the purple skirt is gone, never to be seen or heard from again. But then the woman in the yellow cardigan starts to manipulate the director, and it makes me wonder, was she also obsessed with and stalking the director? "That's right, he's the one who had that stalker following him around for weeks!" (204) In the last few pages, the woman in the yellow cardigan takes on some of the daily traits we saw early on in the woman in the purple skirt. She sits at her reserved bench, she eats the same cream bun, and the children in the park make a game of her. And then I was wondering, were they the same woman? Was this a psychological twist and the entire book was just the woman in the yellow cardigan obsessing over some other version of herself? But other analyses I read suggested that the two women were, in fact, separate people. So I concluded that the woman in the yellow cardigan was so obsessed with the woman in the purple skirt, that when she could not stalk her, she decided to become her in whatever way she could. She had longed to be her friend, and when that was taken away she coped with that obsession in the next best way she could. This still doesn't make as much sense to me as the thought that maybe they were the same person the whole time.

Needless to say, I've never read a book quite like this, and I've never had a book leave me with more questions than answers in this way. I'm hoping someone else will pick this up so that I have someone to talk to about it. Have you read this? If so, I’d love to know what your thoughts are.

This is the part where I'm supposed to put a rating based on the five-star scale. I'm still undecided, The book itself is probably a 2.5-star read. but the way that it left me thinking and reeling makes it deserve a 3.