The Woman in the Purple Skirt is an ordinary woman who only ever wears a purple-colored skirt. She doesn’t do anything particularly unusual or unique. She looks for work. She eats a cream bun while sitting on a park bench. She seems to barely make ends meet. 

Our narrator isn’t the Woman in the Purple Skirt. It’s the woman in the yellow cardigan, who watches the woman in the purple skirt, and know her life thoroughly. She seems to want to be friends with the woman in the purple skirt. 

“When the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan goes out walking in the shopping district, nobody pays the slightest bit of attention. But when the Woman in the Purple Skirt goes out, it’s impossible not to pay attention. Nobody could ignore her.”

But it’s not just watching, the reader realizes. The narrator helps the woman in the purple skirt by putting out the job listing magazines at the convenience store, she drops off shampoo at her apartment to make sure her hair gets washed. She eventually finds the Woman a job at the same hotel, cleaning rooms. 

This is part of her attempt to befriend the Woman, by making them colleagues at the same job. But still she watches from afar. 

The Woman in the Purple Skirt becomes popular with the other employees. But the narrator remains invisible, not just to the woman but it seems to almost everyone else working there. 

Some might say this book is disturbing. But I just felt this sadness for the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. A nameless, faceless woman who nobody knows, not even the reader. The loneliness of living in a city leads her to longing for a friend, into voyeurism and idolization of an everyday person.