**Review will be published to blog in month-in-review blog post on 01 Nov 2018 at 10:00AM EST**

Anyone who visits a Japanese convenience store will always comment on how efficient and "next level" they are, so I found the subject of this novel charming. In a way, the novel was charming; it was short and the writing was plain. We followed Keiko, who I thought was sociopathic at first, but then figured was more likely to simply be on the spectrum. In the same vein, the novel reminded me of the show End of the F***cking World at first, and then reminded me of the show Atypical. The novel is definitely more like Atypical than End of the F***cking World though, except Atypical has a little more humour and is a bit more punchy than the novel. Some might find Convenience Store Woman a little slow or boring, but I think some of that can be forgiven if you consider that this novel is about conformity. This novel provides an opportunity for social commentary about what is considered "normal," but the novel itself is a bit too plain to contain the discussion within its pages. From the novel, we simply take Keiko's observations. Like her, to some extent, many of us want to fit in, so we take social cues from other people and learn proper reactions. What better place to learn these rules than at the convenience store? Now, does this novel provide an accurate representation of how famed Japanese convenience stores are managed? I'm thinking probably not, as not all employees' lives revolve around the convenience store as closely as Keiko's does, and not all employees follow the rules as precisely as Keiko does, but Murata does work part time at a convenience store herself, so who knows?

This is an extremely short and quirky novel in which we step into the life of Keiko Furukura, and her routine-bound life as a convenience store worker. So much of Keiko’s identity is wrapped up in her career at the store, she feels the store speaking to the very cells of her body! At the same time, Keiko is conscious that she isn’t fitting the description of a normal person that society expects her to conform to.

On the surface this reads as a dark yet comedic examination of social expectations, and in the audiobook I think the humor is really enhanced by the tone of the narrator. However there is also a more meta examination of meaning and identity - Keiko’s sense of purpose and comfort that she finds in her uniform, her regulated hours, and a life she can follow the steps for within the convenience store manual make for a fascinating and unique narrative.

Thanks to @groveatlantic for an ARC in exchange for an honest review (I read in print alongside the audiobook which is available via @hoopladigital).

I really enjoy memoirs of unordinary lives, or from a perspective that I did not expect or know anything about. I found this to be really interesting and sweet and totally unexpected. I enjoyed it and the peek into a life totally unlike my own.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is set in Japan, and follows the life of Keiko Furukura who is 36 years old and has worked at the same convenience store for eighteen years so far, and feels no impulse to change. She’s comfortable there and it’s a safe space – she knows how it operates, what is expected of her, and she’s been there so long that she has a store of responses that sit various situations so she can avoid awkward interactions.

If you’ve been to Japan you’ll know their convenience stores are quite integral. We have 7-11s and similar in other parts of the world but in a konbini (コンビニ) we have a different level of quality all together. Aside from the seasonal items and limited edition specials, you also get very cheap yet high quality fresh-ground coffee, snacks such as sandwiches, gyoza, onigiri and then evena black label premium range, and then there’s also free wifi, free and clean restrooms, and a clean seating area for you to rest or work. It may be menial work but their level of quality and convenience vastly outweighs any other I’ve come across.

This book explores the general view of society in Japan, and how there are only the few main ways one is expected to act and seek to accomplish in life. And how it feels to be on the outside of these norms, feeling that pressure to conform but remaining outside of the scope of normal. As someone who has been diagnosed as having Asperger’s, I was really able to identify with Furukura. Others may see the relentless analysing as exhausting however it’s simply how some environments or situations read. And safe is good. In Japan there may be the expectation to live for your job and while, yes, take pride in your work, somehow this doesn’t stretch to convenience store work.

Really, we should be congratulating those who do any job well. If Furukura feels safe in that job, is happy getting up each day, and earns enough to live the life she wants… that should be enough for her parents and those around her.

That blurb! I'd like to know the amount of people it fooled into believing that this book is a quirky romance. I know it did me! It's fine though, because it's infinitely better than any romance could be.

Actually, I take it back. This book is a romance- it’s just one between Keiko and her convenience store. Yep. It’s very heart rendering/warming.

It begins ever so slightly, tracing the steps of a shopper in a convenience store through the ears of our experienced sociopathic store worker of 18 years, expecting his every move and being perfectly right in her expectations. This is accompanied with the sonorous patter of steps, tills, vending machines, all with that knee-quaking Doppler effect. Few things are as pleasing. I admit, I love convenience stores. I fantasize about working in retail.

This is a small sliver of a book, simply told, fully fascinating, sometimes disturbing and very frustrating. What follows is our entrance into the life of this person so detached from any human emotion, living in the family-focused Japanese society. It’s a thin wobbly line she’s treading and, in many ways, tests us, the reader, as to what we’re willing to accept and assimilate. Even within the Western individuality-is-king realm I occupy, I wanted for Keiko, no matter if she didn’t.

It’s a drawn-out struggle between this surrounding demanding society and our clueless Keiko flailing around poorly to keep things afloat. It’s hard to relate to Keiko (unless you are a socio/psychopath, in which case, rejoice) and often agonizing and as the book progresses, it only escalates. It often feels like you’re playing a game of tug of war within yourself, with whoever at one end and you, good intentioned and noble, at the other- pulling your weight for Keiko. Except Keiko is the rope. She’s the one you’re pulling at.

All of this (and more) this book manages while being utterly simplistic. It lifts all its depth by capsizing on the readers framework, our innate human needs and upbringing, and the resultant managing of a thing called ourselves within society.

Who wins? You’d have to read the book to find out, but I can assure, it stays true to the book and hits you square in the face.

I would like to suggest, despite myself, this book as a book club read- it would do spectacularly. It requires a reading of yourself as an occupant in human society and then further. It’ll set off a million questions, such as: what role does nurture play in neutralizing (I mean this in the kindest possible way possible) sociopaths and what are we doing SO wrong that we create psychopaths instead? And, what do our set of norms do to us? In this world where tons are being eroded and challenged, are there any that should definitely stay?? What all kinds of human (maybe to even include AI?) are we willing to accommodate and encompass? I can’t even begin to imagine the takeaways it will spark. Morality, creation, God, it’ll go all up in there.

As a bonus, this could be paired with the movie Thoroughbreds, and then compared on how it handles the two characters of a similar kind in a different societal state of mind. How does it reflect on their actions (there is a world of a difference) and how does it affect us (most likely yeah?) non-sociopaths? It’ll blow you, and if it doesn't, i'll do it.

So, you think i should start a book club?

It took a while to get into the idiosyncratic rhythm of the writing and although it reminded me of a more offbeat High Fidelity I never quite understood the appeal (essential to the plot) of Shiraha, the least developed character.

There is a trend in fiction right now (Motherhood, The Pisces, My Year of Rest and Relaxation) that features women who don't fit society's norms and instead of discovering a path to self-improvement, embrace a form of radical self-acceptance. What I love about this trend is how unique each character's desires and circumstances are within this larger trend and Convenience Store Woman's Keiko is unlike any other. As a child confused by the rules of society, Keiko learns to love the regulated sameness of working in a convenience store. In an effort to placate her sister and friends she forms a relationship with a co-worker to fool everyone into believing she is normal. Murata's spare, straightforward prose conveys Keiko's simple, logical attitude perfectly.

Very unusual story of Keiko, a young woman who works in a convenience store. It seems that she is neurodivergent and finds a certain comfort and order in working at the store. She ends up meeting a new employee at the store who reminds me of the men's rights activists online who always complain about how society messes with them. That character really disturbed me and I felt bad for Keiko who actually puts up with him.

2.5 stars, really, but I feel bad for rating a book I didn't even finish so low.

I don't know if there's something lost in translation, or if it's just me, but I did not find this book amusing. The main character is affectless and the people around her are vaguely drawn caricatures.

Published in Japan in 2016; published in translation by Grove Press on June 12, 2018

As a child, Keiko Furukura decided to teach another child some manners by braining him with a shovel, a decision she regarded as perfectly reasonable. She was thereafter viewed as a strange and troublesome child. Realizing that her straightforward approach to life kept getting her into trouble, she learned to mimic the behavior of other kids and to follow instructions, never speaking or acting on her own initiative. The conformist strategy worked for her, as it does for many people.

Convenience Store Woman follows Keiko’s life from college, when she takes a part-time job in a Smile Mart, until Keiko is in her late 30s. The convenience store job suits her because a convenience store “is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated.” In other words, conform or leave. Keiko adapts perfectly to the convenience store lifestyle, faithfully following her trainer’s instructions about shouting greetings to customers, looking them in the eye, smiling, asking if they want anything else, bagging purchases and making change. Thanks to the scripted work and clear expectations, Keiko finally feels comfortable interacting with others. It is her first time as “a normal cog in society.” She is so happy that she is still working there eighteen years later.

Keiko draws her malleable personality from her co-workers, taking a bit from each one until she has amalgamized a personality of her own, albeit one that changes as a function of employee turnover. She believes she has been “infected” by their speech patterns and vocabulary, causing her own speech patterns and word choices to change as new co-workers replace the old ones. Even her gestures change as she absorbs the behavior of new workers. Keiko has no desire to look for a better job because this job has allowed her to master the art of pretending to be a person.

The story has several themes. One is socially-enforced normalization. Being a convenience store worker is fine for a college student, but as time goes on, Keiko doesn’t fit in with society’s expectations because she lacks the ambition to find a better job or to pursue marriage. On the few occasions she socializes, she is ostracized or criticized because she doesn’t fit society’s vision of how a maturing woman should live her life. Living a fiction of normalcy isn’t easy, particularly for a woman; to justify her low-end job as a middle-age woman, Keiko contrives excuses and finds a relationship partner, even if the platonic and rather unpleasant relationship is one of convenience.

The culture of gossip is another theme. Keiko is happiest when she is talking with co-workers about essential convenience store issues, like whether the store can make its sales goal for deep-fried chicken skewers. When co-workers realize Keio is having contact with a fired worker in her free time, they can’t stop grilling her about her relationship. They also feel compelled to lecture the ex-worker and Keiko about their respective failings. In Japan as everywhere, people want to meddle when they should mind their own damn business.

Perhaps the overriding theme is the importance of being true to one’s nature, regardless of society’s expectations. Keiko’s sister is distressed about having to cope with the fact that Keiko is not “normal,” but Keiko is content just the way she is. Her life has definition. The convenience store speaks to her in a voice that only she can hear. She knows exactly what the convenience store needs. Being a convenience store worker makes her happy, while the prospect of looking for a better job or getting married and having sex are antithetical to Keiko’s ability to live a fulfilling life.

That, I think, is the great lesson of Convenience Store Woman: when someone is happy and content to live in a way that doesn’t harm others, whether the person has a “normal” life isn’t the business of anyone else. Being happy and harmless is just fine, and trying to change a person who isn't hurting anyone because they don't "fit in" is an act of cruelty. Convenience Store Woman teaches that profound lesson in an allegorical story that is both appealing and deceptive in its simplicity.

RECOMMENDED

I loved this and its hilarious portrayal of an incel (not the main character)! It reminds me of Moshfegh in a way but completely unique. Looking forward to reading more from this author. The plot was absolutely fabulous.

My rating is 3.5

This is a quirky story about a woman named Keiko who has found her life's calling in a Convenience Store. Everyone around her finds her strange, but Keiko doesn't understand. She doesn't find fault in thinking differently and being okay with just the minimum in life. It is difficult for Keiko to master relationships of any kind. As I was reading, I began to understand Keiko and wanted others to just leave her be. What's so wrong with living an unconventional life and being okay with it?

I felt this was a really interesting book and one i would have to go back to at a future date. I thought the cultural story that Murata was telling not too far from a western one and was still recognizable. The way she told the tale was really interesting and it was really interesting learning about Japanese convenience store culture. It took me a while to decide how i felt about it after finishing it but it was definitely a book id recommend.

Convenience Store Woman is reminiscent of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. The novel by Sayaka Murata portrays the moving narrative of a woman, Keiko, who has always felt at odds with who she is. Misunderstood by her family, she finds ease in the routinely existence of a convenience store worker, where organizing shelves, labeling products and greeting customers makes Keiko feels that at least there, she belongs.
But Keiko can't ignore the unforgiving patriarchal society she lives in, and when a new worker joins the store she begins to think that perhaps normalcy can be found beyond the glaring lights of the convenience store.
Murata's story brings readers closer to a woman who defies society rules in her own way, who merely wants an opportunity to live life the way she wants to live it. Convenience Store Woman is without a doubt one of this year's must-reads.

Unsettling. I can wrap up the review for Sayaka Murata’s “The Convenience Store Woman” in that one word. But first, a big thank you to NetGalley and publisher Grove Atlantic for this ARC.

The convenience store woman of the title is Keiko Furukura, a slightly eccentric woman in her mid-30s, who has been working at the Smile Mart for over 16 years. She is diligent and focused and seems to love her job at the store. As the book progresses, we see how she gets into a pact of convenience with Shiraha, who works at the store for a brief while, and allows him to live with her for mutual benefits. The rest of the story is about how that pans out for both of them.

The first thing you know by this point is that Keiko is not a “normal” woman. She holds the same job for an inordinately long time, and in a convenience store of all places, which is unheard of. She is single and shows no intention of even going on a date and she displays very Asperger’s Syndrome-like behaviour. These and other quirks are more than enough to classify her as “abnormal” by everyone including her parents who are always trying to “cure” her. Keiko struggles to understand why things like hitting a boy in the head or even thinking of taking a knife to a child to keep him quiet is a matter of consternation to people.

“When something was strange, everyone thought they had the right to come stomping in all over your life to figure out why. I found that arrogant and infuriating, not to mention a pain in the neck. Sometimes I even wanted to hit them with a shovel to shut them up, like I did that time in elementary school.”

Obviously, Keiko is someone we never warm up to but we do understand her problem of being an outcast in society. Not just because she has odd tendencies like beating up people to keep them quiet but simply because she stands out in the homogenized mass of married people. Shiraha is Keiko’s male counterpart, an oddball and a deeply distressed one at that. His one wish is to get away from all the people who question him and pressurize him for answers.

To me, Keiko and Shiraha are the symbols of the growing class of people who are making conscious choices to stay away from the otherwise deadening regularity of life. They are highly individualistic people who seem alien because they stay on the fringes of society and are happy to do so. Keiko is genuinely puzzled when she is endlessly questioned on her lack of a “proper job” and a husband.

“I can’t go on like this? You mean I shouldn’t be living the way I am now? Why do you say that?”

And she reasons it out to herself

“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.”

Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the angst of these misfits and also provides an overview of Japanese society, which has been riddled with problems of celibacy and disinterest in having children in recent years. Although, not everyone can empathize with the slightly extreme proclivities that Keiko and Shiraha have, we can certainly identify with their feeling of frustration at being questioned repeatedly over their choices and of desperately trying to keep themselves from being subsumed by the heaving mass of a monochromatic society.

The characterization in this book is highly masterful in that you alternate between sympathy, empathy, disgust and other emotions for both protagonists. This swirl of feelings and the soul of the novel is entirely retained by Ginny Tapley Takemori’s beautiful translation. So effectively that it left me unsettled even as I turned the last page.

I received this book as an advance copy from NetGalley.

This book is about a woman who is potentially a psychopath who finds that she is best able to imitate humanity by aligning her entire life with the convenience store she works in. This could have been a look at Japanese culture, psychopathy, what repetitive jobs do to people but instead it was an afterthought of a book that merely brushes at these topics without actually doing the exploration that books are supposed to do. I gave it 2 stars because it was a quick read and I got through it but I consider this book to be a load of waster potential.

Daily life in Japan has never seemed stranger than in the compelling English-language debut from Sayaka Murata which draws a portrait of alienation in a society that already seems to exist somewhere just over the border from familiarity. The novel exposes the rather shocking life and interior world of Keiko Fukukura, a girl born without social awareness in a place tightly bound by its rules. Thus the child Keiko enters a world of mystifying norms of conduct. When a teacher shows signs of hysteria one day in class, what could possibly be wrong or unhelpful, she wonders, about calming the woman’s mood by pulling down her skirt and knickers? And, after all, it works.

For all Keiko’s confusion, she gradually comes to understand her oddity and responds by withdrawing from involvement with others, managing to complete a solitary education to university level. And then, miraculously, she finds her niche. An impulse decision sees her applying for part-time work in a convenience store, one of those mini-supermarkets ubiquitous in urban Japan, stocked not only with food but a mass of other daily necessities.

Here, Keiko is drilled in how to greet her customers (‘Irasshaimase! Good morning! accompanied by a compulsory smile), how to stock the shelves with products determined by season, weather and time of day, and how to conduct herself generally. This will be her world for the next eighteen years, ruled by snack food innovations, terms of address, sartorial style, employment conventions, cleanliness standards, and the music of store life – cash registers, customers, footfall.

A model employee, Keiko learns a great deal more from her environment. Observing her peers, she trains herself to mimic the pitch of their voices and emulate their fashion taste, earning approval by buying clothes from the same stores. Functioning well at work, she also holds up the acquaintanceship of a few girlfriends, to whom she lies about her health to explain away her continued lowly work status.

But she can’t explain away to these young women, all busy planning their marriages and families, her lack of a partner. Enter Shiraha, a tall, creepy, unmotivated new employee who joins the store’s work force but is quickly sacked. Meeting again by chance, Keiko and Shiraha begin a conversation about their twin exclusion from norms, which results in a major act of pragmatism: she accepts his offer to cohabit, a sexless bargain in which Keiko gets social acceptability, while freeloading Shiraha gets free board and lodging.

But it doesn’t last. Encouraged by Shiraha to quit the convenience store and search for a better-paid job to support the pair of them, Keiko eventually realizes that the price of seeming ordinary is too high. She doesn’t need Shiraha but she does need a convenience store. Without its music in her head, she has lost her attunement to any kind of life, normal or ab-.

Simultaneously disturbing and enthralling, Murata’s short work, a bestseller in her own country, speaks volumes about society and the role of the outcast. Whether comic or tragic, dreamy or realistic, the parable is leant sharper relief by the very particular conformism and rule-bound expectations of the author’s own culture, where sexless marriages are apparently a norm and the birthrate is dropping like a stone. Read it and become acquainted not only with degrees of separation, but of acceptance of identity, no matter the cost.

It took me a while to figure out where the author was going with this book. In the end, I really enjoyed the way this novel challenged preconceived notions about how individuals fit into a society. This is really a meditation on the meaning of work and how we tend to mindlessly let others define ourselves.

Title: Convenience Store Woman
Author: Sayaka Murata
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 out of 5

Growing up, Keiko was a strange child. She didn’t react like everyone else—two students fighting, and everyone wants them to stop? Bashing one of them in the head is the solution, right?—and she never understands why her reactions are so wrong. So she learned to mimic everyone around her, creating a nice, normal persona with nice, normal reactions.

For 18 years now, she’s worked part-time at a convenience store. She’s never had a boyfriend. She has only a few friends—who don’t know she’s playing a part. Her family doesn’t understand her. But the routine of the convenience store gives her structure, and the employee handbook gives her rules to follow—she knows the part she must play to look like everyone else.

When she meets a fellow convenience store worker who also doesn’t seem to know how to react, she decides to take action to make everyone finally believe she’s normal once and for all. But will change be for the better?

I’ve been fascinated with Japanese culture since the first time I read Shogun. That’s why I picked this up. However, this book ended up being pretty meh for me. I like feeling a connection with the characters, and I just didn’t get a sense of connection at all. I felt sorry for Keiko, but she felt so distant that I couldn’t really care. (Part of this may be due to the novel being a translation, part to the fact that Keiko may be on the spectrum, so she just isn’t easy to relate to.)

Sayaka Murata is an award-winning Japanese writer. Convenience Store Woman is her newest translated work.

(Galley provided by Grove in exchange for an honest review.)

Social conformity? Keiko Furukura, the 36-year old convenience store worker is oblivious to what is expected of her in this brilliant English language debut. Comparisons of Japan's 'Eleanor Oliphant' will naturally arise, however Convenience Store Woman is different in presenting the story of a woman who is comfortable in her own skin, no previous past trauma to account for her behaviour or reasoning behind any oddities. She is simply herself and Murata writes this character with such understated simplicity that the reader is wholly absorbed and accepts Keiko for who she is from the very first page.

Over the 18-years that Keiko has worked in the Tokyo store, she has become so attuned to the daily activities of Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart that she repeats store manual-approved phrases in her head, at home, eating dinner, even in the middle of the night when she is unable to sleep. As store managers come and ago, and friends get married and have babies, Keiko recognises that society expects her to progress in her life as well. Why it's so important to them, she has no idea why. When Shiraha, a down and out, begins working at the store, his presence is a catalyst for Keiko. Deciding what she must give up in order to appease to people's confined expectations of her, Murata's commentary on the inflexible social roles women - most specifically - are expected to fill is sharp and unabashed.

Brilliant read!