Convenience Store Woman
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3.7 • 541 Ratings
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Meet Keiko.
Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.
Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married.
But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store...
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. Keiko, who has a history of strange impulses wanting to grill and eat a dead bird, pulling down a hysterical teacher's pants to get her to be quiet applied to work at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart on a whim. Where someone else might find the expected behavior for convenience store workers arbitrary and strict, Keiko thrives under such clear direction, finally finding a way to be normal. In fact, she thinks of herself as two Keikos: her real self, who has existed since she was born, and "convenience-store-worker-me." But normalcy is not static, as Keiko discovers. The older she gets, and the further she drifts from milestones like having a "real" job, marrying, and having children, the more her friends and family push her towards change. She strikes a sham marriage deal with a lazy and shifty ex-coworker, which, though it finally makes her "normal" in the eyes of others, throws her entire life and psyche into turmoil. 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.
Customer Reviews
Good and easy read
Gives you an idea just how much work means to Japanese society.
Wholesome and beautifully insightful
Off the bat, this book was so wholesomely poetic and imaginative for such a general, familial purpose of a story; a simple convenience store! It was peculiar how there were no chapters, epilogues etc I had to double check if it wasn’t a short story or novella. It was quite different, juxtaposed amongst a cosmopolitan stage.
This short novel follows Keiko, a 36 year old convenience worker who navigates the world through a unique, uniformed and self contained way. It’s clear she had some learning difficulty or behavioural issues. The things she’d say or do that were bad or not ‘socially acceptable’ she could never understand or grasp why it was so; this deadpan attitude of a narrative was oddly refreshing and very unique.
What really got me questioning society as a whole was when she had an ex-co worker move in out of the blue. After letting it slip at work that she had a man staying in her home, all of them became social piranhas feeding off it and valuing her finally, as a WOMAN. It just goes to show you how herd-like society has become and the culture we have created.
Not fitting into any societal norms, standards and herd-mindset; I found that was very much appreciated in this book, almost as an exposé into the cogs of civilisation and how othered we could be for the slightest differences. I respectfully agreed (although not so much to the extremist-like extent of the character Shiraha I must add..) with the author’s views on conformity and social norms.
I feel like this would be a brilliant book to explore themes and takeaways in an English class as I could explore so many in this book I could write an essay. All in all, a very sophisticated, niche and well thought out and knowledgeable topics, wrapped around just a simple convenience store! A refreshing, insightful and very quick read. I must read her other books as her writing is so well done!
Fantastic read
A funny and entertaining book. I loved the characters.