Convenience Store Woman

“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”

Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.

Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.

“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”

So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.

“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”

Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.

There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”

Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.

I don't know how I was in the mood for this type of book. The last time I tried something similar (meaning slice-of-life, no angst), I couldn't get into it, but Convenience Store Woman pulled me in. I could relate to Keiko. We actually don't have much in common, but I could relate with society trying to 'fix' you, trying to dictate what you're supposed to do, projecting onto you, and I really loved the main theme of the book.

I liked Keiko very much from the start, I liked her peculiar way of thinking and doing things. Her method of doing things was very logical and she had a purpose and a path. Reading the book I loved discovering the way Keiko worked. Sayaka Murata really has away of drawing the reader in and getting the reader to care and be curious about what's happening. Highly recommend the book.