the woman in the purple skirt, by Natsuko Imamura

A woman is manipulated and intensely watched in this unusual tale of obsession.
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A woman observes another woman, who wears a purple skirt. She tracks her every move, stakes out her apartment and knows her daily routine. The Woman in the Purple Skirt, we learn from the observer-narrator, sits at a favourite bench at a local park, talks to the inquisitive children who play and has a habit of eating cream buns. The Woman in the Purple Skirt doesn't work much, holding down the occasional odd job. The narrator, who describes herself as the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, manages to steer the Woman in the Purple Skirt to a job interview at her own place of work. Purple Skirt and Yellow Cardigan are soon working side by side at a hotel, doing menial work, cleaning rooms etc. Purple Skirt doesn't know she's the subject of such close scrutiny. She does quite well at the hotel and makes friends, which somewhat piques the controlling Yellow Cardigan. When Purple Skirt starts an affair with a senior staff member, things start to go off the rails. 

Japanese writer Natsuko Imamura has written a wonderfully suspenseful and quirky thriller, with its unlikely backdrop: the world of boring work. The novel is notable for the way it chronicles the minutiae of daily life - bus trips, lunch excursions, small gossip and pettiness at work. The cleaning staff at the hotel all exist in a competitive bubble, spying and squealing on each other. This eccentric and original story has much in common with Dostoyevsky's The Double, an often funny, surreal tale about a government clerk who turns up to work one day to find a competitive young man who looks eerily like him doing the same job. The steady drumbeat of tension is also reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, especially her novel about an unhealthy obsession, This Sweet Sickness.
Quirky and addictive. 

The Woman in the Purple Skirt, by Natsuko Imamura. Published by Faber Fiction. $27.99

Review by Chris Saliba

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