When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that's what a human is.
Oddly amusing, while quietly devastating, I guess an outsider’s viewpoint is the best from which to skewer a society; and hoo boy, is Keiko Furukura ever an outsider. Convenience Store Woman was Japanese author Sayaka Murata’s English language debut (first translated in 2018) and it is told from the POV of a neurodivergent woman who demonstrates to the reader how she has learned to impersonate a “normal human” and is able to support herself with a part-time job in a convenience store; but as the story goes on, we learn all the ways in which Japanese society frowns upon, and actively works against, her choices. This novel succeeds completely on two levels — as both social criticism and the compelling narrative of an entirely unique and likeable protagonist — and I would happily read anything else by Murata.
For breakfast I eat convenience store bread, for lunch I eat convenience store rice balls with something from the hot-food cabinet, and after work I’m often so tired I just buy something from the store and take it home for dinner. I drink about half the bottle of water while I’m at work, then put it in my ecobag and take it home with me to finish at night. When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.
Keiko has always understood that she doesn’t behave like other people, but from the first time she put on her convenience store uniform and successfully mimicked the training video’s big smile and chirpy “Irasshaimasé. Good morning!” customer greeting, she knew that she could live a convincing replica of normal life. And for years, that was enough. But after being in the role for nearly two decades, Keiko is increasingly asked: Why don’t you have a real career? A husband? A baby? And even these questions wouldn’t be bothering her too much if she hadn’t met a fellow oddball: Shiraha the misanthropic incel (if he can’t find a girlfriend, he’d rather not try to fit into “the village” at all, with its Stone Age era rules and punishments). Between them, Keiko and Shiraha demonstrate and vocalise the incredible gender-based pressures that Japanese society places on its members, and Keiko conceives of a relationship of “convenience” that just might free them both from scrutinous pressures.
I liked the mordant humour, as when Keiko notes that brushing her infant nephew’s cheek felt soft, like fingering a blister (also shocking when she contemplates how her sister could get her baby to stop crying as she regards the vegetable knife in her sister’s hand), and it was also revelatory that Keiko felt no emotional difference between holding her own nephew and an old friend’s baby; she can’t even imagine why she would. But despite modelling her clothing, facial expressions, and speech on what she observes to be socially acceptable to those around her, what really feels special is the rich and unsuspected – if unconventional – inner life that Murata gives to Keiko: she’s not played for laughs or sympathy; she’s simply different.
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. Finally I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me.
Shiraha does rattle Keiko’s equilibrium – and his presence initiates the action of the plot – but it’s how Keiko decides to deal with her new understanding that makes for an entirely satisfying story arc; it’s a wonderful bonus that we learn so much about Japanese society along the way. Rounding up to five stars.
Enjoyed by audiobook while recovering, face down, from retina reattachment eye surgery
