Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

4 stars for Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.

This book has been on my reading list since the middle of last year. If not for my book club's upcoming discussion in February, I doubt I will read it any time soon. For that, I am glad. This is a good story.

The book is a darkly comic look at society expectations, social pressure and conformity. The story revolves around a 36-year-old woman, Keiko Furukura, who works in a convenience store. Through Keiko, readers are told what is acceptable and what is not in the so-called normal world where there is no room for exceptions and where exceptions get eliminated quietly. From page one to the last, we see how Keiko absorbs the world around her and morphs from the person she is to one that the society expects her of. It is both amusing and sad to see the world through Keiko - amusing because she lives in her own world where black means black and white means white, and sad because she tries so hard to try to blend in with society that she loses sight of who she is.

As the author is a Japanese, the book very much reflects the Japanese culture and way of thinking. A good example is how Keiko views herself as not just an individual responsible for herself but to society as well, for the reason that she works in the convenience store. To quote "Sixteen years ago I learned from manager #2 that my pay covers the basic requirement to manage my life so that I’m fit for work. I must get enough sleep before going to work.”

There are also truths of life to learn from this book even if some of them are what I already know all along. The thing is, seeing them put in words, elevate it to a different level. One good example is on the theme of change. A customer commented that the convenience store never changes. Yes, the store is the same but yet to Keiko, it is not. To quote "The same items had always been in their places, but they were continually being replaced. Maybe it made sense to say the store never changes." Another example is people are continually changing according to the world around them. The changes may be subtle but they are there. To quote "I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too. When we last met a few years ago, most of the store workers were laid-back university students, so of course my way of speaking was different then."

This book is well written and easy to read. There is pretty much nothing to dislike. My only gripe is, reading a novel that is originally written in Japanese and subsequently translated to English, something or many somethings - be it culture, mannerism or way of expression - are bound to be lost through the translation. Interestingly as well as ironically, the translator chooses not to translate the Japanese way of saying I-understand-what-you-are-saying from "Hai" in Japanese to "Yes" in English. For people who are not familiar with the language difference, it will have been a disaster in understanding, as "Hai" in English is used to express grief, horror or regret.

Truth be told, I have never paid much attention to convenience stores or the people who work in them. Having read the book, I now see these stores in a different light. This book offers not only a bird's eye view on convenience stores, but also the finer details of how a worker of one such store can gain vital information - about customers in the store and expected business volume - simply through listening to sounds, observing behaviors and checking the weather. The detailed descriptions and observations offered in the book are so realistic and practical that I wonder if the author is writing from own experience, having worked long term in one such convenience store before.

Though it is never explicitly mentioned in the book, the protagonist, Keiko, clearly displays the symptoms of autism - finding it hard to understand what others are thinking or feeling, getting very anxious about social situations, and finding it hard to make friends or preferring to be on her own. As such, it makes me really curious as to how the story will pan out, especially when Keiko increasingly is in dire need of assistance. In the end, I feel that the author does a brilliant job in concluding the story. Its ending is one which I am sure sits well with Keiko, the Convenience Store Woman.


Publisher: Grove Press; Reprint edition
Publication date: 17 Sep 2019

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Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers’ style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person.

However, eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only few friends. She feels comfortable in her life, but is aware that she is not living up to society’s expectations and causing her family to worry about her. When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keiko’s contented stasis—but will it be for the better?

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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