Weaving of Arachne

  Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami is a heart-warming tale told through the perspective of a fourth grader unnamed boy. Kawakami employs the stream of consciousness narrative technique to apprehend the thought process of the little protagonist. The eponymous Ms Ice Sandwich is a salesgirl who works at a sandwich stall in the local supermarket. This innocuously plain description suggests that Ms Ice Sandwich could be any ordinary girl, who we come across daily but don’t spare any thought on her. But Ms Ice Sandwich is different from the ‘normal,’ in that her face bears the testimony of a failed plastic surgery, which draws attention towards her but not in a good way.             She is treated as a weirdo and freak because of her ‘abnormal’ face, but what is worse is that some people go to the extent of declaring that she ought to die because her ‘abnormal’ face repels them. However, our little protagonist is fascinated by her unusual face; in fact he finds nothing wrong with her,