Book Review – Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata was a gift from a kind friend.  I had not heard of this novel before I was given it, but since reading it myself have noticed many people reading it on the tube and it has caught my eye in lots of book shops.  Unusually for me I feel ahed of the curve with this one! The accolade on the front cover “Haunting, dark and often hilarious….. I couldn’t put it down” clearly suggests why ‘Convenience Store Woman’ is now everywhere.

Keiko finds a job in a convenience store when she is 18, After spending much of her child hood and teenage years trying to fit in but mostly feeling very different, she finds a place in the convenience store where she can be herself. The daily routines, the standard phrases she has to use with customers, the organisation of foods and managing the daily specials brings a joy and normalisation to her life she has not previously known.

At 36 whens she is still single and still at the Convenience Store, pressures from her friends and family begin to amount.  Why isn’t she married? Why doesn’t she have a proper job.  Along comes Shiraha, the new and frankly dreadful convenience store worker. Despite his mean attitude to Keiko she sees him as a way to make her appear normal to the outside world and takes him into her flat where he lives mainly in the bathroom.  Her response to him as a person and a potential partner is funny but also a little sad as she accommodates him into her orderly life.  To explain more would give too much away but needless to say, relief comes in the form of the Convenience store

The novel is written in a very dry and precise style, and although it didn’t make me laugh out lout I appreciated the dark humour and its acute observations.  I am sure any one who has worked in any kind of customer service chain store or restaurant will recognise bits of this in their own experience of corporate speak and expectation.

I loved the quirkiness of Convenience Store Woman, but also related in part to the solace and comfort which can come from the routine and rhythm of daily life.  There are lessons to be learnt here about contentment and satisfaction with the here and now which is perhaps  at odds with the go getter mindset we are bombarded with today.  And although, I don’t know a huge amount about Japanese culture, I suspect its very at odds with this too.

Convenience Store Woman is translated from the Original Japanese.  The author Sayaka Murata is a winner of a number of prestigious literary prizes in Japan.  Vogue Japan named her as one of their women of the year.  She is in her 30’s and works part time, in a convenience store.  This clearly accounts for the lovely attention to detail and the nuances of shop work found in this her 10th novel.

This is a quick and unusual read, and one I absolutely recommend.