Ms Ice Sandwich

An unnamed fourth-grader narrates a quiet, funny, and unexpectedly moving stretch of his own life: he has become fixated on a young woman who works behind the sandwich counter at his local supermarket, whose dramatic ice-blue eyeshadow has earned her the private nickname "Ms Ice Sandwich." He visits her counter again and again, working up the nerve to actually speak to her, while schoolyard gossip about his crush threatens to turn the whole thing into a joke.

At home, his closest confidante is his grandmother, who is dying and has lost the ability to speak — their one-sided conversations become a place where he can say the things he can't say anywhere else. A new friendship with a blunt, unpopular classmate named Tutti gives him, for the first time, someone his own age he can be honest with.

Mieko Kawakami's English-language debut is a small, quietly devastating novella about noticing other people — really noticing them — for the first time, and about how children absorb loss long before they have the words for it.