Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2016)

A 36-year-old woman works in a convenience store for 18 years excluding all else in her life to the consternation of family, friends, and co-workers.

Book Review: Convenience Store Woman is one of those rare books that feels as if it was written just for me, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, or just about any of Kafka's short stories. I know Keiko here as I know Merricat. This book is 163 pages long and I need about that many pages to discuss it as I found myself relating on too many levels. In one sense it's about finding the life that works for you no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Being a store worker is for her "the only way I can be a normal person." Many of us work hard at being normal: "It was the first time anyone had had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech." But it's okay to be seen as odd, different. Live your life, don't let others live your life. It's also about the joy that can be found in a job well done, the satisfaction of of having complete command and understanding of what you're doing and how to do it. Keiko can read customers' "minutest movements" and her body "acts reflexively in response." Convenience Store Woman also looks at how a demanding job in the old world can start to take over life. Laundry, groceries, cooking, clothing all have to fit into the dictates of work. The job begins to define all elements of life. Another side of this view is the completely unnatural world that is modern work, divorced from us as humans, and what the working world makes us into: cogs in the machine. "At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt I'd become a part in the machine of society. I've been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society." Temporary, easily replaced, just another widget along the conveyor belt. Although Keiko, the main character in Convenience Store Woman, has very little life, actually it's the same and no less than the life of anyone working for someone else. Like Keiko we're all temporary. It can be read as about disability or depression or any need or lack with which we have to cope, any way that we can. Yet I also simply wanted to read it realistically. What if this was me. Toward the end of the story when everything starts to fall apart, it becomes clear that Keiko would make an excellent manager, and perhaps only her being considered odd has kept her from being promoted. A thoughtful book that made me think, that took me inside someone else's skin, but also a quick, enjoyable read that I related to my own life. After reading I have two wishes: (1) that Sayaka Murata will now have more of her work translated into English and other languages, and (2) that Keiko gets to be in charge of her very own convenience store.  [5★]