Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata 📙 REVIEW

 

A literary gem that deals with the inner conflict a person feels when they are happy with the life they are leading but society has labeled them weird and abnormal. 

Keiko has been working at a convenient store for all her life. She has never fallen in love, and she has never had a boyfriend. Her family and friends cannot stop thinking that it is weird that she is thirty-six years old but she hasn't gotten married or gotten a better job yet. Will Keiko ever be normal? 

Keiko narrates her story of how she has always been considered weird despite her efforts to act normal. The only place where she feels as part of a group and she can be useful is at the convenience store where she has been working for eighteen years. The writing style is a first person narration, and we are inside Keiko's mind. What is intriguing about this point of view is that we get a brutally honest and emotionless voice which expresses how Keiko keeps trying to understand how society works and to become part of it. The fact that Keiko's deadpan voice derives from her unique way of thinking makes her a great example of representation of people who have hard time understanding social cues and norms; all she has ever asked from people is to clearly state how they want and expect her to behave. 

A major theme in the book is the fact that people as a whole do not tolerate and do not accept individuals who do not correspond to the universal idea of a normal person. As Keiko explains: 

    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. (pp. 80-1) 

Keiko tries hard to be normal and remain part of the normal world by learning from a young age not to speak her mind and by mimicking people around her or following instructions. So when she got the job at the convenience store at the age of 18, Keiko was jubilant because it was the first time that someone taught her how to look at people, what to say and how to say it. The convenience store becomes for Keiko a version of a society she enjoys because she can finally belong; for as long as she and her colleagues are in uniform, they lose their singular identity and they all become a homogenous group of convenience store workers. The bliss of belonging to the group of the convenience store workers is intensified by the fact that she has finally found her calling and she is an excellent worker, which makes her understand what it means and how great it is to be a useful member of (a) society. The fact that the title of the book is Convenience Store Woman and not Convenience Store Worker hints that Keiko desires to be accepted by the actual society, 'the normal world'. You will have to read the book to find out if she succeeds in being accepted or not. 

One last comment I would like to include is the emphasis on sound. The opening lines of the book are a description of the sounds made when the store is busy. Keiko is used to the sounds of the convenience store, and she hears them nonstop, even when she's out of work. Contrasting the vibrant and lively nature of the convenience store sounds to the silence that comes with death, it can be argued that it is the convenience store that keeps her alive. This can be further supported by the fact that she only eats food that she has bought from the specific convenience store. 

To conclude, Convenience Store Woman is a beautifully written literary masterpiece that teaches readers to accept humans as they are and not to try to fix them based on their idea of what normality and happiness looks like. 

Favourite Quote: 

I just want to exist, quietly breathing. 

Rating: 

5 / 5 💛