The story is narrated by The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, who becomes infatuated with a woman known as “The Woman in the Purple Skirt” in her neighbourhood. The narrator’s intense interest in the Woman in the Purple Skirt leads to an unhealthy obsession, with her closely tracking the woman’s daily activities. As the story unfolds, we see the Woman in the Purple Skirt struggling to maintain stable employment, receiving bills and debt collection warnings, much like the narrator, who also faces financial difficulties despite being employed full-time.
Driven by empathy and perhaps a desire to escape her own financial struggles, the narrator covertly attempts to help the Woman in the Purple Skirt find a job. She leaves recruitment magazines with job listings circled for the woman to find at her usual park bench. Although the Woman in the Purple Skirt secures a job as a hotel cleaner, the story takes an unexpected turn when it’s revealed that the narrator and the Woman in the Purple Skirt work at the same hotel, albeit in different positions. They start taking the same bus to work, allowing the narrator to witness the woman’s early days in her new job.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt quickly impresses her cleaning supervisors and coworkers. She’s encouraged to take hotel amenities for herself, and her exceptional performance leads to her completing a month-long training program in just a few days, a feat considered unprecedented. However, after a troubling incident where she is molested on her bus commute, she stops taking the bus to work. This change in her transportation routine reveals that the cleaning agency’s director is providing her with rides, suggesting a possible romantic involvement between them.
Meanwhile, the narrator’s life takes a downturn, as she is evicted from her flat due to rent arrears and forced to stay in a hostel, leaving her valuables in a train station locker. She begins to stake out the Woman in the Purple Skirt’s apartment, discovering that the director is visiting her for dates. Rumors circulate at work, and her colleagues become suspicious of her relationship with the director, her habit of locking doors while cleaning hotel rooms, her unusually high salary, and the alleged sale of hotel amenities at local events.
The situation takes a dark turn when the director confronts the Woman in the Purple Skirt about the theft of hotel items, initiating an argument on the second-floor landing. During the altercation, the director falls over the banister, causing severe injuries. The Woman in the Purple Skirt believes him to be dead and expresses her despair. The narrator, who has been watching from a distance, intervenes with a plan to help her escape. She instructs the Woman in the Purple Skirt to retrieve money from her locker at the train station and meet her at a specific station.
However, when the narrator arrives at the agreed-upon meeting point, she finds that the Woman in the Purple Skirt has not followed the plan and has disappeared, leaving her with nothing. Several days later, the cleaning agency employees, including the narrator, visit the director in the hospital, where his loyal wife is at his bedside. They condemn the Woman in the Purple Skirt for her alleged actions, portraying her as a stalker and an attempted murderer. In a private moment with the director, the narrator uses compromising information about a celebrity customer’s underwear to blackmail him into giving her a substantial raise.
The story concludes in the local park where it began, as the narrator sits on the Woman in the Purple Skirt’s bench, eating a cream bun and engaging with local children, taking the place of the Woman in the Purple Skirt once and for all.
The novel raises questions about the narrator’s obsession with the Woman in the Purple Skirt. Is she merely a stalker, or does she see something of herself in the woman? The reasons behind her obsession remain unclear, leaving readers to speculate. The ending of the novel, while building suspense effectively, does not provide the dramatic reveal that some readers may expect. This lack of closure can be frustrating and unsatisfying, leaving readers to ponder the identities of victims and perpetrators in the story.
The narrative tone is deadpan and cold, yet it also carries elements of humor and quirkiness. Despite some stiffness in the translation, the novel explores a range of relevant and universal themes, including workplace dynamics, exploitation, patriarchal capitalism, urban precarity, working poverty, envy, and prejudice.