“Convenience Store Woman” is a short book but the deadpan tone of Sayaka Murata didn’t let me read it in one sitting. I had to put it aside and contemplate on what was happening to understand the protagonists’ emotions or lack thereof. It’s a book that makes you think—about the mundane things in life, and how they all connect to the bigger picture.

Keiko Furukawa has always known that people find her strange. When she was in school, she saw a dead bird, and wanted to take it home to grill it for her father. She ended a fight between two boys by hitting one on the head with a spade, and “calmed” a hysterical teacher by pulling down her skirt to shock her. As an adult, Keiko isn’t very different. She still thinks most problems can be solved by hitting people with shovels. When her sister’s baby wails, she eyes a small knife thinking it could help.

She doesn’t realize why these kinds of thoughts and actions make her different though. Keiko thinks she is doing what the situation demands, and opting for the simplest solution. But people don’t understand her ways, they never did. And so now as a 36-year-old, Keiko keeps to herself.

The normalcy of routine work, without creativity, at the convenience store makes her feel like a functioning cog in society. She loves her job and takes it seriously. But her family and colleagues find it weird that she has had the same job for years and her career doesn’t seem headed anywhere.

There are bits that are weird and you have to struggle to make sense of them, but Keiko is a fascinating character. And it’s fun to try and see things through her eyes—it’s a completely different perspective altogether. There are some laugh-out-loud moments because of how Keiko views the world and deals with people around her—she gives ‘feed’ not ‘food’ to a guy living with her as if he were a pet.

Convenience Store Woman is a simple story of one woman’s quest to make sense of this chaotic world. From the first sentence of the book—‘A convenience store is a world of sounds’—you can hear, feel and see everything that’s happening.

Murata spent 18 years working part-time in convenience stores before the success of Convenience Store Woman finally allowed her to quit for good and write full-time. The book is Murata’s 10th novel but the first to be translated into English. It has sold more than a million copies in Japan and is being translated into 23 languages worldwide.

Fiction

Convenience Store Woman

Sayaka Murata

Translated to English by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Published: 2016 (Japanese) 2018 (English)

Publisher: Granta Publications

Pages: 163, Paperback