Everyone seems to have long finished, but anyway I wanted to record my thoughts before proceeding (currently at the end of section 20).
This book is driving me crazy.
It’s so mundane on the surface. Murasaki did this, and Murasaki did that. None of which is especially interesting. But there are so many details that don’t stand up to scrutiny at all.
First of all, the narrator is completely invisible, and untouchable. While she seems to be able to do simple transactions (buy cinema tickets, for example), she can also overhear intimate conversations, be in completely empty spaces next to people she is supposed to come across every day and still remain unnoticed, leave restaurants without paying without any consequences. I’m constantly tempted to think she doesn’t exist, or is a ghost, or is a piece of furniture or whatever, yet she has described enough human things to show she must be a regular human being, separate from Murasaki. If we can rely on anything she says of course.
The narrator has had months in the same environment with Murasaki and boss, but she’s never been noticed by either, and has never managed to strike a conversation (in fact she says her comments went unheard). She touches Murasaki twice (once grabs her nose, once is bumped to the floor), and Murasaki never once notices.
When she said that it’d be nice if the woman with the yellow cardigan existed, did she mean that she doesn’t? Is she a figment of someone’s imagination? Does no one ever notice her? She appeared again in that fantasy where the whole neighbourhood spontaneously celebrated Murasaki getting a lover (being normal?), when the camera turned to Murasaki’s point of view and showed, just for a second there at the edge, Yellow Cardigan Woman. Does she only exist through Murasaki? Are they the same person after all?
Then there’s Murasaki herself. She’s gone through several immense transformations during the book. From extreme poverty (and supposedly talked about by townspeople and teased by children) to shy new recruit to hardworking and popular coworker to inconsiderate colleague stealing stuff and cutting corners, to sexy mistress with heavy makeup, in the span of a couple of months. The townspeople seemed to have stopped recognizing her as the purple skirt woman the moment she got the job, the children recognized her but befriended her, then stopped recognizing her when she turned to mistress. Is she even the same person? I suppose it will become more evident soon, but I’m still very unsure whether this is all a metaphor or something else entirely. We do tend to know people superficially and stereotype them, and in fact I’ve had casual acquaintances comically not recognize me when they saw me with a different hairstyle, so it’s not out of the question that people who knew someone just by the colour of her skirt would not recognize her when she started dressing up, for example. And children do generally see past the outward appearance, so it makes sense that it took more changes (changes in attitude) for them to stop recognizing her. But is that what I’m supposed to take from all this? Or is something else going on? Does she exist? Is she always the same person?
And, okay, let’s forget all of the above. What kind of surreal scene was it when she suddenly wanted to show off to her lover her magic crowd weaving walking skills? What was that?!? Who does that?
Edit: Maybe Yellow Cardigan is the author. Murasaki is the character. The rest of the world is mostly real, with the author’s imagination mixed in. So the author is walking around town, imagining her character(s) interacting and doing stuff. I’m watching a work in progress. 
I guess I’ll know (or not know, depending on where the book is going) soon, but I just needed to try and put my thoughts in order. I don’t think I’ve succeeded, but oh well. Onwards!
Maybe 
I saw a trend in Japanese to English translations which I don’t understand and it also made itself into the Serbian version:
(This is section 23 in case anybody wonders)
:
) repetition to them, and while I found them very interesting initially (they talked about Imamura’s life and how she got into writing, and how she received the prize, and related topics), that enthusiasm dried out a bit, and I was actually on the verge of ditching them, but my perfectionism pushed me along 
