Modern fiction is teeming with characters who don't fit comfortably into the world they inhabit. I grew up enthralled by self-absorbed male outsiders like Holden Caulfield in the beats. But over the years, I've come to find greater depth and variation in stories about women the world routinely ignores, be it the wry spinsters and Barbara Pym's fiction or the poor, defiantly unconventional Sula who gives her name to Toni Morrison's great early novel. You can add to this list the heroines of two first-rate new novels, one from Denmark, the other from Japan, by literary stars in their home countries. Although different in style, both books are brief and often hilarious. And because they're tinted with autobiography, both are exceedingly smart about single women past the first flush of youth.

"Mirror, Shoulder, Signal" is the latest novel by the Danish writer Dorthe Nors, who possesses a rare gift. She treats heavy, dark matters with a very light touch. Her heroine is Sonja, who grew up in the Jutland boondocks but moved to Copenhagen in search of a grander life. Now in her 40s, she's alone. Her boyfriend has dumped her. She suffers from vertigo. And she spends her life translating gory crime novels that everyone but her seems to love.

Fearing that she's becoming a solitary weirdo, she decides to enroll in a local driving school, where - metaphor alert - she has trouble shifting gears for herself. At first, Sonja's story seems like a nifty social comedy. She has amusing scenes with her angry, foul-mouthed female driving teacher, who spouts the lane-changing mantra, mirror, shoulder, signal, and with the new-age massage therapist that she visits after being stressed out by those behind-the-wheel lessons.

But the novel soon deepens, carrying us into Sonja's more stinging emotions. These involve her love of the Jutland countryside and her painful estrangement from her married sister. All the while, Sonja casts a skeptical eye on orderly, prosperous Copenhagen, where, lurking beneath its comforts, one keeps finding dissatisfaction. Unable to shift, the fretful Sonja finds herself caught in a no woman's land, eager to escape loneliness, yet incapable of reaching the people she yearns to reach.

So what, if anything, should she do? That's the question the novel proposes. And one suspects that Nors, a single woman born in Jutland who once translated crime novels, knows just how thorny any answer must be.

A similar form of alienation gets deliciously perverse treatment in "Convenience Store Woman," a massive bestseller that won its author, Sayaka Murata, Japan's biggest literary prize. Its narrator, Keiko, has been written off as a misfit ever since, as a little girl, she found a dead bird in the park and suggested that the family grill it as yakitori. She yearns to know the secret of acting just like everyone else. And at 18, she discovers it when she's mysteriously drawn to a soon-to-open convenience store called the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart, and she applies for a job.

In Japan, convenience stores are tiny wonderlands and almost the quintessence of the mainstream, equal parts 7-Eleven, McDonald's and Starbucks. Working at Smile Mart, Keiko learns the official rules and rituals of being a good convenience store woman. What to do and how to talk is spelled out for you. She becomes a model employee who mimics the style of her favorite co-workers, and so she works there happily for 18 years. Then the store hires a male employee who's an even bigger misfit than she is, and things start to change.

Now, Murata herself spent years as a convenience store employee. And one pleasure of this book is her detailed portrait of how such a place actually works. Yet the book's true brilliance lies in Murata's way of subverting our expectations.

It's not simply that Keiko finds liberation, even happiness, by becoming a cog in the capitalist machine, an unsettling idea when you think about it. Murata also makes us see how the family members who find her love of the store's rituals strange are themselves trapped within a set of rules - dress this way, don't talk like that, get married and have kids. But unlike her, they - and maybe we - don't know it.

Near the end of "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal," Sonja meets an old woman who talks about how one survives while not fitting into the slot that society has for you. You live with it, she says, and you find your ways. With bracing good humor, Nors and Murata celebrate the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost of being themselves.

This story of a convenience store woman in Japan is not for everyone. Keiko is a societal anomaly, choosing to remain in the dead end job she's been at since she was a university student. She is also unmarried, without children and has very odd opinions and little to no emotional range. Her life undergoes a shift when she colludes with a workmate on a rather strange deal to fend off the disdain and pity of her friends and family.

I found Keiko to be an interesting character and her musings about what is and isn't normal as well as the mistreatment by society of those it views as "abnormal" are thought-provoking. Still, I was neither particularly touched or impressed by this book. At times, I felt that the language was too sparse, the dialogues unnatural but perhaps it just wasn't for me.

I admire the premise of poking holes are society's standards of "normal" but this was underwhelming for me. If you like quirky books and are open to trying out this novel, I wouldn't discourage you. Still, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone.

Keiko Fururu is very logical and literal and blunt and that makes her interactions with others difficult. Her family thinks something is wrong with her, that she isn't normal. It is to the point that her sister will give her ways to respond to things to fit in better. While at university, Keiko gets a job working at a convenience store. A Japanese convenience store sounds a bit bigger than a 7-Eleven in the US, but not a full sized grocery store. Keiko knows what to do each day and what is expected of her. She doesn't have to rely on her "outsider" awkward social skills but just follows the company dialogue and employee manual. This makes her an exemplary employee and she feels normal. It was interesting to follow along and read how Keiko related to others and situations and I truly enjoyed what I felt was a happy ending.

Convenience Store Woman tells the story of our quirky, by her culture’s standards, main protagonist. To her being a Convenient Store Woman is who she is. To others, she is not normal and she slowly sees her little bit of social “life” slipping away. I had lots of feelings about this book, some even anger. But to me that’s the point of a book— to feel.

I went into this story expecting to experience Keiko's views on being a misfit. Don't get me wrong. I love misfits. I have/am a misfit. I respect misfits who retain a sense of themselves and refuse to blend in with al the sheep. I wanted to like Keiko even though a readily discovered she is a misfit in sheep's clothing. She was content to live her life as a convenience store worker and her life outside that was only to ready herself for the next day. She had no hopes, no ambition, no emotion, Like I said, I wanted to like her but when her lack of emotion leads her to think that a knife would be an efficient means of quieting a child then I too must see her not as a misfit but as a deviant. You look at the school shootings, bombings and other such acts and they all seem to have at least one thing in common - a lack of empathy and a detachment of emotion. The author didn't play around with this trait much other than a couple of childhood instances and this thought concerning her sister's child but she did incorporate it into the story and thus I don't see how one can so easily dismiss Keiko as simply quirky.


Keiko knows she is "uncured" but she doesn't know what is wrong with her. In an attempt to appear cured, she allows a homeless verbally abusive man to live in her home. While I enjoyed her comparisons of this man to a pet, this was one of the few real chuckles the novel allows. I kept waiting and expecting this book to show more, to grow into something sustainable and it never really did. The end comes full circle with the beginning with no more closure or hope than Keiko started with.


This wasn't an awful book. I see real intelligence on the author's part. She makes some wonderful statements about the condition of her society. Unfortunately they are mostly hidden in the angry rhetoric spewed by the incredibly dislikable Shiraha.

This story is a fast read to it's credit. I think in it's current format, anything longer and I would have stopped reading. I realize I (once again) appear to have read an entirely different book than most people. I just ultimately found Convenience Store Woman to be depressing.

My Thoughts: The convenience store woman in this book by the same title is Keiko, a 36-year old who has worked in the same convenience store since she was 18. Debut author Sayaka Murata still works part time in a convenience store, so clearly has the gravitas for putting together her first novel. Convenience Store Woman is all Keiko’s story and Keiko is one very, very odd woman. Even as a child Keiko had been a little strange. Her family worried about her, she had no real friends, and Keiko didn’t really know how to act around other children. As she grew older, Keiko learned to mimic the actions of others, eventually going so far as to mimic their speech patterns and copy how other women dressed and carried themselves.

In these ways Keiko got by for a long, long time. She was content with her neatly ordered life. But, by her mid-thirties people were questioning Keiko. Why was she still working in a convenience store? Why wasn’t she married? Had she ever even had a boyfriend? Once again, Keiko felt the need to adapt to fit the expectations of other, but with limited social skills she had few options. Keiko’s solution was almost as odd as Keiko herself, and it was here that Convenience Store Woman went completely off the rails for me.

I’m hesitant to go to a place with a story that the author never did, but throughout this book I kept thinking that surely Keiko must be on the high-functioning end of the Autism spectrum. Her inappropriate responses to others, her mimicking, her compulsively ordered life, and her lack of social skills all pointed in that direction. Had this been played up more, the book would have been a lot more interesting to me. As it was, Convenience Store Woman was a strange little book about a really odd woman with a sad little life. It proved to be just too weird for me!

Note: I received a copy of this book from Grove Press (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Keiko has always felt different. She reacts to emotions, social situations and just life in general a little bit differently than anyone else. Since her early childhood, her family has tried to "fix'' her, lamenting Keiko's odd behaviors and habits. Keiko feels her job is one of the best things that ever happened to her. One day 18 years ago she found the convenience store and applied for a job there, and she's been letting what she learns there form her life and reactions to people ever since. She uses convenience store greetings, eats convenience store foods and lives a convenience store life. However, being past 30 and working what others see as a deadend, low job has her family once again looking down on her. Poor Keiko....no marriage, no children, no future. What are they going to do about Keiko? And what is Keiko going to do to appease them?

This book is different and an absolutely enjoyable read. I love stories that are creative, different and not like anything I've read before. This story definitely surprised me, and kept me reading. Keiko is odd, but she learns how to deal with life, people and her family. She likes her job....but others keep telling her that her life isn't enough. She ponders how to solve the problem, and makes mistakes. It's very hard to pretend to be like everyone else when you aren't like them at all. I was afraid what the ending of this story might bring, but the ending was perfect.

Convenience Store Woman is a lovely and bizarre story. Just like Keiko. Loved it! I'm glad this got translated from Japanese to English so I could enjoy the story! :) I hope they translate more of her books!

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Grove Atlantic via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are completely my own.**

Darkly comic, subversive and deeply human, this gem of a book is about Keiko Furukura, a Japanese woman in her 30s who is not quite like other people. From a child she has always been “different” and has never viewed the world as others do. However, she is perfectly content in her own way, working in a local convenience store, a place where she feels at home. But should she try to be more like other people, lead a more “normal” life, try to fit on with societal norms? This is a wonderful short book which questions what it means to be normal, what it means to adapt to those around us and what we owe to ourselves to simply be ourselves. It captures brilliantly the atmosphere and daily routine of a convenience store – I could see Keiko’s store so clearly, almost smell it, as if I were actually there. Clever and astute, engaging and moving, this is a deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman at odds with the world but at peace with herself.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for this ARC. I have listened to Modern Mrs Darcy talk about this book on her podcast and it sounded very interesting and I was not disappointed. Convenience store woman is a simple little story about Keiko Furukura a totally quirky hopelessly inept character but in a totally charming and sweet way. I don't usually read books that were originally in another language but this really worked and is a great book.

Keiko Furukura has always been different. From her youngest memories of school, it’s been evident that she’s peculiar. Very literal, she solves problems in ways that are strange and sometimes dangerous. Her parents and sisters are at a loss. She’s never quite fit in.

When she gets a job at a convenience store, her family sees it as a sign that she’s finally growing up and becoming more conventional. But eighteen years later, she’s still working at the convenience store, single and a virgin.

Keiko loves the convenience store. From the very beginning, she has thrived in its rigid environment of rules and predictability. The store manual dictates how workers should dress and act, and exactly how the store should be run. She knows precisely what is expected of her in its environment and her life is running smoothly.

But Keiko is aware that those around her have different expectations of her. Her friends are getting married and having children. She’s not interested in relationships, but she understands that others would be more accepting of her if she followed the traditional path. But going down that path throws her ordered life into a tailspin.

I liked Keiko immediately. Although she thinks differently, she is very self-aware and extremely perceptive. Her observations are insightful and witty. I was rooting for her the whole time.

This quirky, quick read had me hooked from the very first. If you’re looking for something a little outside of the ordinary read, then check out Convenience Store Woman.

This intriguing short novel builds slowly but is worth the wait. It is the story of Keiko, the convenience store worker of the title. She is a committed employee who has done the same routine tasks for eighteen years with enthusiasm and diligence.

Keiko is aware that she does not feel as other people do. She does not understand the expectations of society but is conscientious in mimicking the people around her. wearing the right clothes, showing the right facial expressions and saying the right things.

Keiko comes under a lot of pressure to have a career or a husband or, ideally, both. She does not understand why this matters so much to other people but is careful not to criticise their expectations. Her conformity is enabled by her sister, who is aware of Keiko’s difference but eager to conceal it.

Keiko’s life changes when Shiraha begins to work at the convenience store. He too has failed to meet society’s expectations, but rather than adapting, he is angry. He sees himself as a victim and believes it is always someone else, never himself, that is to blame for his problems.

This book has such a lovely voice and a subtle, understated humour. It asks interesting questions about what it is to conform and to belong. On the one hand, Keiko’s complete acceptance of the terms of a low-paid, demanding job might feel like exploitation, but on the other she shows strength in constructing a life on her own terms.

While the pressure for a woman to marry is perhaps greater in Japan than in the West (embarrassing aunties at your sister’s wedding notwithstanding) it does raise questions about what pressures we do accept without question, and how we look at those who choose not to belong.

The people around Keiko, even those who claim to care for her, are only interested in the surface. Keiko struggles to understand the feelings of others, but they have not even tried to understand hers, assuming that her needs are the same as society’s.

Keiko is both charming and subversive. When as a child she asked why it is wrong to eat a dead bird found in the park, but alright to buy a dead bird to eat from the supermarket, she showed more logic than most adults. Many of her perceptions are quite sensible, even though she is the one who her friends believe is in need of a ‘cure’.

Convenience Store Woman is an engaging story and its simple, spare prose asks some deceptively complex questions.

This is a quirky, wonderful book that I absolutely adored. If you like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine or The Rosie Project, then you should love this book about Keiko the convenience store employee, who isn’t neurotypical but has remarkable insight into how the world works. Everyone around her just wants her to be normal, which means to them either a career-oriented job or marriage, when what she wants is to fit in and be respected for how well she does her job. It’s very short and sweet and poignant, and I’m glad I read it.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic/Grove Press for providing me with an ARC. In exchange I am offering my honest review.

This is a quirky quick read which is part delightful and part disturbing. I'm still trying to process if my discomfort was in the translation or if the author really meant to convey certain thoughts. The repeated use of the main character referring to herself as not normal, was pretty jarring. There are certainly dozens of other word choices to express one's uniqueness, awkwardness or quikiness. It really bothered me that a woman clearly written on the Autism spectrum would repeatedly be labeled not normal by friends, family and co-workers.
Keiko Furukura has lived her life seemingly apathetic to society's norms. She finds pleasure and comfort in her job as a convenience store employee where she is able to mimic the gestures of others and ridgely adhere to the employee manual. After 18 years at the same job a new co-worker enters her sphere and spins her world out of orbit. While this may have been written to appear as dark comedy, I thought it was sad and somewhat cruel. I honestly found nothing charming in those sections.
This book challenges what we{society} perceive as "normal" or acceptable and mocks the oddity of reason. While I'm glad I had an opportunity to read this book, I'm pretty ambivalent about the content.
I gave this book two stars according to GoodReads scale as two stars represent "I thought it was O.K" I am curious to read more from this author, I believe she has the capability to craft interesting stories.

Convenience Store Woman is a short, weird little story about an 18 year old girl, Keiko, who doesn't fit in. She's strange. She starts a job at a brand new convenience store....and 18 years later, she is still there.

Often using her health as an excuse as to why she is still at the same job, Keiko follows the rules of the store, careful to follow the rules, and working hard to be ordinary. She deals with pressure from her family and friends to confirm to their standards - to find a husband or a different job, but she continues to enjoy her life as it is. One day, she is tasked with helping a new employee and her life starts to slowly change....but is it for the better.

Thanks to NetGallery for a copy of this book in exchange for this review.

Thank you to Netgalley, Grove Press and Sayaka Murata for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Rating 3.5 stars.

This is a gem of a novel. It might be small in page numbers but it is big on pleasure! It is quirky and offbeat just like the main character. Her name is Keiko and she is an odd duck. She doesn’t understand the world in the same way that most people do. She has to learn how to behave by observing those in her environment and these are things that don’t come easily for her. Keiko watches videos and copies people’s facial expressions and tone of voice but doesn’t understand the feelings behind them. Her logic, however, is impeccable, if not always appropriate. When she was small, two boys were fighting in the school playground. Everyone was telling them to stop, so Keiko picked up a shovel and smashed it over the boy’s head. She thought she solved the problem and expected people would be happy but was surprised her parents were called into the school and she got into trouble. Her parents are so sad for her. They had high hopes that she would be more like her sister but as Keiko got older she never changed. In high school Keiko found a job at a convenience store. She made an excellent employee, a hard worker, alway on time, never missing a day. Here she is today, at age 36, not married, no children and still working at a job most people would have left behind years ago. Keiko is very happy with her life, but is starting to feel pressure from those around her to succumb to societal pressures and be more “normal”. Should she upend her life just to fit in. Who is to say what is the right way to live? Is there only one right way? Set in Japan, where there is a stricter code of what is acceptable in society, Keiko is faced with a real dilemma.

I really enjoyed this book and I thought it raised a lot of provocative questions. The story is told simply and doesn’t delve deep, never giving us too many answers. Rather, it allows the reader to think for themselves. It is a slice of life with some humour mixed in. I found the style of writing interesting because it reads in almost a broken English. It reminds me of the way a person who speaks Japanese might speak if English was their second language. All the characters in this story are delightful even when don’t root for them. We never learn why Keiko is different. She is never labelled with, for example, autism, which I think is awesome. She just is who she is. People exist on a spectrum with a wide range of emotions and behaviours. Who are we to interfere with anyone’s right to live the life they choose. Dropping in on Keiko’s life reminds us that everyone has their own definition of happiness and if you are brave enough you can live your best life.

A quick read, even if weird, starring a woman who seems to have difficulties empathizing with other people and thus bahaving not like she feels, but like the society expects her to. She worked for most of her adult life, twenty years or so, as a convenience store clerk, and this is somehow VERY wrong (not sure I understand exactly why, like she’s not a parasite, living off the back of someone else – I get that it is plateaued and lacking any ambition, but it’s her life and I don’t really get why others are judging her SO HARSH); also, she finds herself in a very strange kind-of-relashionship with a man so much unlike her.
I found her (diseased?) personality/character/nature quite interesting and I also thought some of her reactions highly hilarious, so the novel was a page turner, but I just couldn’t really relate to any situation or thought or – especially – with her relashionship, and it gets clearer and clearer to me that maybe I’m just not compatible with Japanese culture, or maybe Asian culture in general, as I find it hugely strange and most times uncomprehensible..

Keiko doesn't fit in. That is, she doesn't fit it anywhere except the convenience store where she's worked for 18 years. She knows that her friends, family, and coworkers all think she is strange for staying at one job for so long. The pressure to be "normal" reaches a point where Keiko invites a man to stay with her, to give the appearance that she's finally accomplishing at least one step on the way to ordinary adulthood.

The most enjoyable parts of the book are when Keiko in working in the convenience store, methodically explaining her tasks and the sights and sounds of the store. Reading those sections is calming, while reading the parts where Keiko is forced to interact with others and make her best attempt at normalcy are painful, because they're written in a way where you are nervous for Keiko to make a mistake. It's quite brilliantly done so that you can see the difference in where Keiko is comfortable versus where she is not. This book also gives a peek inside the head of someone who isn't rebelling against society, she honestly doesn't understand society.

Some of the dialogue is a bit clunky and awkward, especially when Shiraha, the man who eventually moves in with Keiko, is spouting his endless monologues. However, that could be just cultural differences in how Japanese speak. The length of this book is perfect, there's a nice tidy ending and you can read it in an afternoon.

Short quick read about a 36-year old convenience store worker in Japan. Still not quite sure what to think of this book. It reads as though the woman is autistic? I'm just not quite sure what this book was really getting at.

4.5 pleasantly surprised stars for this intriguing little book! Convenience Store Woman is not action-packed nor steeped in drama, but it is a compelling read nonetheless.

The story follows Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old, part-time convenience store employee. The people in her life have always thought she is a little odd, and yet they are perplexed by her seeming inability to move beyond what is seen as a temporary life stage. Keiko, on the other hand, doesn't know why anyone should care that she has found contentment in the predictability of her work, and the comfort brought by the rules in the employee manual.

I'm not exactly sure how Sayaka Murata managed to write such a captivating account of what is basically the daily routine of a worker in a convenience store, but I could not put this book down! Keiko was a fascinating character, and by the time this (much too short!) story was done, I found myself rooting for her to live her life her own damn way, weirdness and all.

I'll definitely be watching for more from this author -- her talent is incredible.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with an e-ARC of this book.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review..

What a treat. I loved this book. Very moving portrait of an odd duck – never labeled, which is refreshing – making choices to survive in this society on her own terms. I feel like it anymore detail would be spoiling, if not the outcome than at least the joy of discovery, So I was just totally recommend it to anyone who enjoys unusual depictions of female characters, and women finding the strength to live on their own terms.