Convenience Store Woman

by Sayaka Murata

Other authorsGinny Tapley Takemori (Translator)

Hardcover, 2018

Call number

FICT MUR

Collection

Fiction

Genres

General Fiction

Publication

Grove Press (2018), Edition: First English Edition, First Printing, 176 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:The English-language debut of one of Japan's most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of "Smile Mart," she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction�??many are laid out line by line in the store's manual�??and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It's almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action... A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine… (more)

Media reviews

The New Yorker

...for all the disturbance and oddity in “Convenience Store Woman,” the book dares the reader to interpret it as a happy story about a woman who has managed to craft her own “good life.”

— 5 more

Huffington Post

Convenience Store Woman closely observes the inevitable failures of a society to embrace all within it, and the contrasting ways disenfranchised men and women manage to cope... Through the eyes of perceptive, dispassionate Keiko, the ways in which we’re all commodified and reduced to our

functions become clear. What’s unclear is what other option we have. We all want to be individuals, and yet we also want to fit in somewhere. We all want to be seen for our own intangible humanity, and yet we see others for their utility.

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Publishers Weekly

Murata’s slim and stunning Akutagawa Prize–winning novel follows 36-year-old Keiko Furukura, who has been working at the same convenience store for the last 18 years, outlasting eight managers and countless customers and coworkers.... Murata’s smart and sly novel, her English-language debut,

is a critique of the expectations and restrictions placed on single women in their 30s. This is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a “functioning adult” in today’s world

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Kirkus Reviews

A sly take on modern work culture and social conformism, told through one woman’s 18-year tenure as a convenience store employee.... Murata provides deceptively sharp commentary on the narrow social slots people—particularly women—are expected to occupy and how those who deviate can inspire

bafflement, fear, or anger in others.... A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.

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The New York Times

In Sayaka Murata’s “Convenience Store Woman,” a small, elegant and deadpan novel from Japan, a woman senses that society finds her strange, so she culls herself from the herd before anyone else can do it. She becomes an anonymous, long-term employee of the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart, a

convenience store, a kiosk for her floating soul...“Convenience Store Woman” has touched a chord in Japan, where it has sold close to 600,000 copies....I have mixed feelings about “Convenience Store Woman,” but there is no doubt that it is a thrifty and offbeat exploration of what we must each leave behind to participate in the world.

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The Guardian (UK)

Not all novel titles manage so very literally to describe the contents, but this one – unapologetically deadpan yet enticingly comic – absolutely does...This, Murata’s 10th novel, has been a big hit both in Japan and worldwide, and it isn’t hard to see why. It’s not flawless: Shiraha

seems to be more of a plot enabler than fully realised character and, though Murata’s gloriously nutty deadpan prose and even more nuttily likable narrator are irresistible, I’d have liked more on her latent psychopathic streak...But these are minor quibbles and perhaps even missing the point. For it’s the novel’s cumulative, idiosyncratic poetry that lingers, attaining a weird, fluorescent kind of beauty all of its own.. The book’s title is more than perfect, for this, you soon realise, is a love story. Keiko’s love story: the convenience is all hers.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member TooBusyReading

The best thing about this short audio book? That it was short. Despite that, I almost gave up on it. A woman who is a misfit has a job at a convenience store, and the store becomes her life. Rules are important. Copying people so they will accept you is important. Having friends is not important. A

not-very-reliable co-worker comes along, and then, apparently it becomes important to at least pretend to fit into the world's expectations.

I understand what the book was trying to tell me. I understand the underlying message. I even liked the protagonist. But for me, the story just wasn't interesting. Both the translation and narration felt stilted. Perhaps part of that was character driven, but it just felt like a poor production. I'm sorry I bought this one.

Of course, everyone has different tastes in books, so you may love this book.

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24 more

LibraryThing member Petroglyph

This was an oddball character study that aims high and pulls it all off.

The novella’s narrator is Keiko Furukawa, autistic. She has a hard time figuring out how to behave in ways that society finds acceptable, and so when she speaks to people, she copy-pastes her intonations, word choices and

speaking styles from various colleagues. Fortunately, she works part-time in a 24/7 convenience store, where lots of colleagues work for brief periods before moving on, and so she has plenty of people to copy without her camouflage ever becoming obvious.

That part-time job was a great way of seeming “normal” when she was eighteen, and her family was happy for her then. She’s thirty-six now, though, and shows no hint of ever wanting to change her life, and that is making Keiko seem suspiciously abnormal to society in general and her family and friends in particular. But the job is perfect for Keiko: after all, it came with a manual that tells her exactly how to address customers, and with a training video that illustrates the correct inflections and level of enthusiasm to display -- and she does them perfectly. She couldn’t fit better into her job, but it’s the very thing that is threatening to undo her camouflage.

Enter the central conceit of the novella: Shiraha, a male colleague her own age, who definitely displays many features of misogynistic toxic masculinity -- he considers himself beta and has given up on even trying to compete with ambitious, high-earning alphas for both money and access to females (though he does not use those terms). As it turns out, autistic Keiko and misogynistic Shiraha find common ground in their issues with all the things society expects from them and which they are not equipped to handle.

That is the central idea of the book, and I think Murata did a really good job of developing it into plausibility (though it’s not a complete success). But where this novella really shines is Keiko’s inner life: her tools and tricks of the trade of appearing “normal”, her contentedness with her (to outsiders) dead-end life, and her out-of-left-field planning to prevent her life from derailing.

Very well done. I think I shall be recommending this to lots of people I know.

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LibraryThing member SamSattler

No one would ever claim that Keiko Furukura is normal — including Keiko herself. Keiko knows that’s not the case, but she studies “normal” people so intently that now she can mimic them well enough to fool most people into believing she fits right in to contemporary Japanese society. Only

those closest to her, including her co-workers at the convenience store where she’s worked since she was eighteen (literally half her life), even have a clue as to whom she really is.

Keiko Furukura is, simply put, a Convenience Store woman. She is, in fact, the perfect convenience store employee. She always comes in an hour early so that she can prepare herself for the day; she is a willing parrot of all the canned greetings that her manager requires her to give each customer who enters the store; she watches the shelves like a hawk to make sure that they are always in perfect order and that sales/promotional items get prime locations; she is willing to help out wherever the crisis of the moment pops up; she has the patience necessary to train the perpetual flow of new employees; she’s willing to work whatever shift, on whatever day, is best for the store; and she even purchases out-of-date and damaged food items for her own home meals. She is, without a doubt, the perfect employee…and everyone, including her own family, wonders why she is such a failure.

By the time a Japanese woman is as old as Keiko, she is expected to have a well-paying, full-time job or to be at home raising her children. She is not supposed still to be working “part-time” at the only job she’s ever had in her life. That is just not normal. Keiko grew up believing that she needed to be “cured” of whatever it was that made her different from everyone else. She just didn’t know exactly what that was. In the convenience store she learned, from training videos, which facial expression goes with each type of customer interaction, and she is happier there than she is anywhere else in the world. So…why can’t people just leave her alone?

One day, a young man, himself far from “normal” according to the mores of Japanese culture, explains his theory about society and how it treats people like them:

“This society hasn’t changed one bit. People who don’t fit into the village are expelled, men who don’t hunt, women who don’t give birth to children. For all the talk about modern society and individualism, anyone who doesn’t try to fit in can expect to be meddled with, coerced, and ultimately banished from the village.”

Bottom Line: The moral of Convenience Store Woman is: mind your own business. Keiko is perfectly suited to her work, she loves it, and it gives meaning to her life. Her manager, although he does not fully appreciate her, is very lucky to have her; the corporation is lucky to have her; her co-workers may be the luckiest of all to share the store floor with her; her parents and sister are lucky that she is theirs. And each and every one of them wonder what is wrong with her and how they can “cure” her. Keiko Furukura is an unforgettable character with an important message, and Sayaka Murata has packed a lot into this little book of only 163 numbered-pages.

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LibraryThing member cathyskye

I was very fortunate with my immediate family. I knew from the age of eight that I didn't want to have babies. When I played house with the children across the street, I went to work and my "husband" stayed home with the kids. This feeling never changed, and no one in my immediate family ever tried

to get me to "see sense". They were willing to let me be me even if it meant no husband and no babies. For several years in my working life, I supervised dozens of teenagers. Perhaps it was my way with them that made everyone think I was married and had at least six children. Even if it wasn't, at least no one bothered me about my lack of marital status and children; they already "knew" I was married. I was very lucky indeed because I saw many others being harassed by their families to conform.

Poor Keiko Furukura was not as fortunate as I. She's spent her entire life being the square peg everyone tries to pound into the round hole. Keiko tends to take everything literally, and when Murata described some incidents in her childhood, they made me laugh-- which has to be another indication that I'm a fellow square peg. Keiko is perfectly happy, but her family insists on her being "cured", on her meeting their expectations for her life.

Convenience Store Worker is a little gem of a novella that sucked me right in. I knew that Keiko would bow to her family's pressure, and I hated that. I hoped that she would be strong enough to survive her attempt to please others and that she'd be able to return to being her kind of happy. I can see why Sayaka Murata is such a popular writer in Japan, and I will be looking for more of her work. Now if only more people would abide by her message in Convenience Store Worker: Don't stick your nose in someone else's business. Square pegs do have a place and a purpose in this world.

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LibraryThing member SqueakyChu

This is a cute and quirky story about a young woman named Keiko Furukura who worked as a convenience store employee. I liked this character very much. Throughout the story, I had the feeling she was an individual on the autism spectrum who worked quite hard at learning social interaction and very

much enjoyed the demands of her work.

I began to feel uncomfortable for Keiko when her friends put her on the spot by questioning if she’d ever been in love. She was then age 36, single, and comfortable in her role as a convenience store employee. Why rock the boat?

I took the story at face value until the character of Shihara appeared. This was a man who was fired from his job at the same convenience store and for whom Keiko took such pity that she offered for him to stay in her apartment. It was at that point I realized this story was a satire on Japanese life. I understood how nonconformity in Japan does not exist when the strong expectation is for a woman to be married with children or, if single, in a prestigious job and for a man to be married or not but to have a serious, well-paying job. No deviation from this norm is acceptable.

”...you should really either get a job or get married, one or the other...Or better still, you should do both.”

I found the conversations between Keiko and Shiraha quite funny at that point. By the end of the book, I came to the conclusion that this story also addressed the worth of an individual’s work, whatever it may be. That’s a valiant idea.

Convenience stores are so ubiquitous. It was kind of fun to read about an employee of a convenience store. I was surprised that the author of this novel also works in a convenience store. I’d never guess a convenience store employee would also be an author!

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LibraryThing member LisCarey

Keiko Furukara is thirty-six years old, and was a misfit everywhere, in her family and at school, until at the age of eighteen she began working in a new branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart. The store employee manual gives her a set of rules. The uniform relieves issues of how to

dress during the work day. Her coworkers provide her with examples of how to talk--and what to appear excited, happy, or angry about. She learns the rhythms and needs of the store, and even working only part-time, she becomes the store's best worker, and outlasts fellow part-timers and a total of seven managers. She's on her eighth manager when she realizes her family and her small number of friends are really worried about her, and want her to adopt a more normal, and to their minds happier, lifestyle.

She starts to realize that this time, they're not letting up. And that she's only going to be able to do convenience store work as long as she stays fit and healthy, something that is only partly in her control.

There are also some strange things happening in the store. One of them is a man her own age, a new employee, who looks down on convenience store work, but can't hold any other job because of his own peculiar attitude. His situation is even less socially acceptable than Keiko's, and his own family is far less tolerant.

Will Keiko find a way to fit in, or will she find a way to embrace who she is?

The story is engaging, funny, and sometimes disturbing, but I couldn't help rooting for Keiko.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

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LibraryThing member krau0098

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: This was a fun and quick listen (I listened to it on audiobook). I enjoyed how it looks at someone who doesn't fit in mentally with general society and how she manages to find a place for herself

despite this. She is constantly struggling against society's expectations of how she should be "normal" and work to fix herself.

This story follows Keiko. You glean from the story that she is severely autistic and just doesn’t fit into society very well. Although she graduates with a degree she finds herself most comfortable within the rules and bounds of a convenience store. She is very, very good at her work and takes a lot of joy in it. Unfortunately, her family and friends are constantly trying to “fix” her and she wants to make them happy so she embarks on an experiment to be more “normal”.

This was intriguing and well done. I really enjoyed how it drives home the point that society should let people do what they are good at and what makes them happy (when it is as innocuous as working at a convenience store). Everyone is different and should be allowed to live the life that suits them without striving to meet others expectations.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this. It is a fun and quick story about a woman who just doesn’t fit in with normal society but is able to make a home/life for herself anyway. I would recommend this if you are intrigued by autism and/or those who don’t fit in with social norms. It was a thought-provoking, if simple read.

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LibraryThing member xiaomarlo

This book rules! I highlighted so many good portions. It reminds me a lot of Bartleby the Scrivener. A modern, feminist, asexual version. Really great, and a fast read, too.

LibraryThing member lycomayflower

This short Japanese novel perplexed me, mostly, I think, because I don't know enough about Japanese culture to get which (if any) bits of the story were over the top and/or satire. Keiko works at a 24-hour convenience store and has done so for eighteen years--"too long," according to her family and

co-workers. It's time she either got a "real" job or got married. But Keiko is perfectly content with her part-time job and tiny apartment. There's obviously commentary about conformity and cultural/societal expectations going on here, but Keiko also seems possibly on the autism spectrum? Or perhaps a sociopath? Or maybe not? And it is the ambiguity about that point that I can't quite read--and also the intensity of everyone's insistence that she cannot remain a convenience store worker. Is that exaggerated in service of the point? Or not? Ultimately I'm glad I read this and feel like it was entirely worthwhile, but I'm still not sure what to do with it. And that's okay.

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LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate

More Japanese weirdness.

I just wish I could go to this world and really be there instead being just another stupid tourist.

Brilliant.

LibraryThing member akblanchard

Keiko loves the daily rhythms of her part-time job at her local convenience store, so much so that at 36 years old, she has never wanted to do anything else. When an unpreposessing but available man comes into her life, her family and coworkers breathe a sigh of relief that Keiko might finally get

married and lead a life more in line with societal expectations. But our unlikely heroine can't leave the store behind. This brief novel is a delight through and through.

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LibraryThing member KatherineGregg

I loved listening to Convenience Store Woman. Convenience stores in Japan sell everything from food to clothing to household goods and Keiko Furukura, the main character, is a convenience store worker. Keiko is a bit of a social outcast and can not read social cues. I would say that she is

Aspbergery. Over time, with plenty of input from her sister, Keiko has learned to copy others behaviors and to respond to questions with pat answers so that she can fit in. Conformity in Japan is very important. Keiko, now 36, has been working at the same convenience store since high school. The job is very routine, Keiko knows exactly what is expected of her, she's good at her job and she enjoys it. However the outside world and her high school friends, who are mostly married or working high level jobs, look down on convenience store workers. Keiko finds another misfit at the store, Shiraha, who eventually gets fired because he is lazy and slouches on the job. Keiko invites him to move in with her which is a win win for both them - society expects everyone to get married and live happily ever after and so they can pretend to be a couple. In reality, Shiraha is mean, demanding and sleeps in the bathtub and expects Keiko to feed him. Eventually Keiko quits her job but once she starts interviewing for other jobs, realizes that all she wants to do is go back to work at a convenience store which she does.

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LibraryThing member oldblack

Woah! What a crazy bizarre story! Or is it really Japanese life that is crazy and bizarre? I have no idea, but I enjoyed reading this book and imagining that the lives described are only one step away from reality. I could relate directly to some aspects of the underlying story, however, despite my

cultural distance. I suspect that Japanese society and its conformity pressures are not as far from my own society as I would hope.

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LibraryThing member froxgirl

This remarkable novel features Keiko, a singular woman in her 30s who has carved out a constricted life she would relish if it wasn't for everyone else. She's been a contented “freeter”(a Japanese term for the intentionally underemployed), a part-time clerk in a convenience store for eighteen

years, but Japanese society in the form of disapproving and frustrated friends and family cannot understand her complete lack of interest in men, marriage, family, and a "real" job. Keiko's recitation of disturbing childhood events indicate that she is somewhere on the autism spectrum, and although the reader will also fight their own impulse to scorn the limitations of her insular world, there's much to admire in her ability to carve out a niche. When she makes a momentous decision to take in a former co-worker, a disgusting man, a leech who is also unable to cope with societal pressures, everyone in Keiko’s life who had been uncomfortable with her unusual lifestyle is delighted. This short novel, published in a small format, can be read in a few sittings and is a large window into difficult Japanese lives in general, and how Keiko admirably battles to carve out her own unusual path.

Quote: “The sensation that the world is slowly dying feels good.”

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LibraryThing member bookworm12

A quirky short novel about a 36-year-old woman who works in a convenience store. She's not "normal" by society's standards and has a hard time understanding the expectations of others and has no desire to follow a traditional path. In a small way it reminded me of Melville's "Bartleby the

Scrivener".

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.”

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LibraryThing member alexrichman

An utterly charming bite-sized book - more short story than novella even, but brilliant nonetheless. A sort of Catcher in the Rye for today's alienated post-youth. Some parts resonated with me more than others, but I'm sure every reader will see fragments of themselves in Convenience Store Woman.

It's hard to imagine anyone not liking it.

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LibraryThing member janeajones

Keiko Furukara narrates this short novel about her life as a clerk in the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart. She has worked there for 18 years since she first got the position as the store opened -- it was a brand new convenience market in a business district, and she had just finished school. In the

culture of the store, she finds her perfect niche. The employees' behavior is outlined in the company manual, and all the stock is displayed in a manner most employed to catch the customers' attention and highlight the store's current sales and promotions. She eats, sleeps and lives for the position she has found despite mounting pressure from her family to find a "real" job or better yet, to get married.

In elementary school, Keiko had learned to cope with her peers by simply keeping silent. The few times she had reacted to situations, her reactions, perfectly logical to her at the time, were deemed totally unacceptable -- for instance, when two boys got into a fight, and everyone was yelling at them to stop, she simply picked up a shovel and hit one over the head. This and a few similar occurences led her loving parents to try to find an elusive "cure" for her.

While it is difficult for someone not intimately knowlegeable about Japanese culture and the kind of exploration/satire Murata is employing, for me, as a Western reader, the novel seems to be exploring the reality and coping mechanisms employed by someone on the autism/Aspergers syndrom scale. The book is wry and has some definite humorous moments as well as a fairly strong message about "living and let live."

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LibraryThing member ozzer

Society imposes acceptable behaviors. Many of these have long histories going back to the cavemen. Learning these is an essential part of growing up. Success with them provides a framework for achieving happiness and fulfillment in the community.

Murata playfully explores these ideas by placing her

protagonist/narrator in a Japanese convenience stores. The Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart is a wonderful metaphor for the wider community. Its employees adopt roles that allow for the smooth running and financial success of the store. Everything revolves around marketing even false pleasantries like shouting good morning to everyone who enters (“Irasshaimasé”).

Keiko Furukura is a middle-aged employee who has been working happily at the store for many years. Prior to this job, she was the kind of person who was too logical and truthful for her own good. Society rejected her and her family felt she needed to be “cured.” The structure she found at the convenience store provided what she needed to adapt. Everything seems to be working out well for Keiko until the store hires Shiraha. This young man is a firm non-conformist who knows what he wants (a wife to support him) and is not shy about expressing his views of what he perceives as an oppressive society. After Shiraha gets himself fired, Keiko takes pity on him and offers to share her really tiny flat with him. This grifter cons her into believing that living with him will make her appear more normal. This seems to work well enough until it doesn’t. While spending his days in her bathtub, he decides she needs to get a better job.

CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN is a simple story with a fable-like quality. The theme is heavy; nevertheless Sayaka keeps the mood light. She treats her characters with affection and understanding. Shiraha, a pretty despicable guy, is portrayed as such a loser that even he evokes a bit of sympathy. This novel has a lot to say and does it deftly. Its brevity only adds to its appeal. It is well worth reading a couple of times—once for the fun and once for the ideas.

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LibraryThing member breic

This is a bit of an absurdist fable, along the lines of Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes" except transplanted to a 7-11. It's cute and fast, but the preaching is tedious.

LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

Convenience Store Woman, by Japanese author Sayaka Murata, and translated into English by Ginny Tabley Takemori, is a novella about a woman who is happy and fulfilled with her job at a large convenience store. But as she ages, her friends marry and advance in their careers and a menial job is no

longer acceptable. Keiko's happiness begins to falter at the pressure and disapproval. At the same time, a new employee, one who openly despises the job, begins work at the store.

This is just a delightful story. Keiko is an unusual narrator, utterly devoted to routine and rules, she carefully studies the demeanor of others to know how to behave. This leaves her unable to withstand the social opprobrium she faces from her friends and family. Keiko is such a wonderful character, and her story is told with such understated compassion.

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LibraryThing member CarrieWuj

This book is a little odd -- kept thinking maybe something was lost in translation. But the protagonist is odd as well: Keiko Furukura has worked in a convenience store for 18 years. The store is a paragon of cleanliness and fast service -- a little nicer standard than the US version. "A

convenience store is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated." (60) Here Keiko finds order and purpose. She is portrayed as possibly on the autism spectrum based on her inability to empathize, read emotion, and follow anything that isn't literal. She mentions her sister and mother hoping for a "cure" for her. The repeated actions and stringent structure are good for her and she thrives in her position, but constantly battles being "normal". "When something was strange, everyone thought they had the right to come stomping in all over your life to figure out why." (56). At the store, she meets Shiraha, a shiftless male worker who has issues of his own -- namely that he is a victim of "village mentality" (conformity) and resents having to fill a societal role of success. He doesn't last long at the store, due to laziness and incompetence, but he latches onto Furukura as a meal ticket, moves in with her and basically has a parasitic, though completely platonic relationship. She allows this because she becomes more "normal" in others' perceptions, filling the role for a middle-aged woman, but when they move toward marriage for appearances only and she quits the store, her purpose and will to live are threatened. She is revitalized by a chance visit to another convenience store where she is able to restore order and find her purpose again. In that environment, she knows her place as a cog in a machine: "Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human." Quirky, esp. because it is told from Keiko's point of view, but there are larger questions here of perception and worth and contribution. I'm conflicted in my opinion -- it wasn't really an enjoyable read, but it was compelling.

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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is a new short novel by a Japanese writer. It is clean, short sentences, refreshing. It is the story of a single woman in Tokyo who at the age of eighteen begins working part time at a convenience store. She stays there for eighteen years and derives her

identity and self image from the store. A store where turnover of staff is high, she remains for almost two decades. The story feels Japanese in the strong urge to conform of the main character as well as others. Her friends don't seem to be able to accept that she is unmarried and without children. That makes her somewhat alien in this conformist society. She eventually allows a man, a loser to live with her in her tiny apartment to make it look that she is conforming, though they have no sexual relations and she has never had a sexual relation which makes her friends uncomfortable. It is a bit of a weird book but very satisfying. I highly recommend it.

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LibraryThing member Yoh

This is a strange, quirky, atmospheric novella translated from Japanese.
It’s difficult for me to rate it because I’m fascinated by this little book, but also I don’t think I liked it very much. I thought the story was just ok, fine. But then the writing and the world she creates just seeped

into my brain and long after I’ve finished it I can still feel all the weirdness. Murata is a talented storyteller. Her main character, Keiko, talks about how the convenience store is a part of her and in a way this book is a part of me now.

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LibraryThing member dwhatson

This is one of the most delightful and quirky books I've read in some time. The protagonist of the novel, Keiko, is neurodivergent, 36 years old, has never had a physical relationship with anyone, has been working at the same convenience store since she was 18 and has a sister who hopes that one

day Keiko will be 'cured'. Her relationship with the convenience store is everything. It regulates her sleeping patterns, the food she eats and her personal appearance. It even provides her with a script on interacting with the customers.

However, working in a convenience store is not seen as a real job and besides, at her age, Keiko should be considering marriage and children. These things mean nothing to Keiko. Instead, she spends her days copying mannerisms, expressions and dress styles from her coworkers to build a repertoire of social normality so that her circle of friends continue to suspect nothing.

Convenience Store Woman is told through Kekio's eyes and so we see the world as she sees it, in all its confusing glory. The writing style is, like Keiko herself, honest and to the point. I read this book as a humorous commentary, if not satire, regarding Japanese working culture. On another level, it serves as a general critique of Japanese society and those, particularly women, through no fault of their own are doomed never to fit in. For someone like Keiko, not fitting in could be perceived as real freedom. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to those who like a bit of quirk with their fiction.

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LibraryThing member RiversideReader

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