Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

The convenience store is gleaming white and everything is in its place, as it should be, when Keiko Furukura works her shifts. There are clear rules and rituals that don't deviate much from day to day. The soundtrack she loves best is the accumulated sounds of the convenience store: the customers' chatter, the bar code scanner, the door chimes, the ring of the till. These are the sounds that comfort and reassure her. In this insular environment where there is a place for everything and everything has a place, Keiko thrives.

In addition to the convenience store, Keiko relies heavily on her sister, Mami. She has leaned on her throughout her life. Mami has always advocated for Keiko, helping her come up with acceptable wording to parrot to her friends, colleagues or boss. Keiko both needs and wants her sister to tell her what to do, how to behave, and how to appear "normal" so she can get on with her daily life.

But at thirty-six years old, her family begins to wonder where her life could possibly headed. How could she possibly still be working in a dead-end convenience store job after eighteen years? Is she never going to get married? Have a family? None of this bothers Keiko herself, but after a lifetime of never being "normal", of never fitting in, someone finally arrives in her life and she decides to try to conform to everyone's expectations of how her life should look, at least from an outside perspective.

Without giving away the plot, this is not at all a typical relationship. When she informs her family that there is suddenly a man in her life, they are immediately overjoyed and jump to all sorts of conclusions that Keiko simply goes along with. They fill in the blanks with typical societal expectations. These answers satisfy them without anyone realizing they've not actually got the whole picture. This shift finally makes Keiko feel accepted, even if she actually remains misunderstood. In Keiko's mind, as long as she mimics normalcy, life should run smoothly enough.

However, when Keiko starts outwardly conforming, despite the pull of acceptance, on the inside she begins unraveling. She has relied heavily on the routine of her eighteen years at the convenience store to guide her behaviour. Life without the convenience store is suddenly extremely inconvenient.

Book cover rating: 4/5