Convenience Store Woman
SynopsisPlot
Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…
Story
About this book
Keiko Furukura is thirty-six and has worked at the same Tokyo convenience store for eighteen years. She joined the Hiiromachi branch of Smile Mart at eighteen, and the job gave her something she had never found at school or at home: clear rules for how to behave around other people. The manual sets out much of it line by line, and she studies her coworkers, copying their clothing, speech, and gestures.
Managers rotate in and out over the years, but Keiko stays. Her sense of herself and the store have grown so close that separating them is difficult. She is content, yet the people around her are not. Family members and colleagues press her to marry and to build what they consider a proper career, and their discomfort pushes her toward a drastic decision.
Sayaka Murata's novel sold about 660,000 copies in Japan and was her first book to appear in English. Its setting stays within the narrow orbit of one shop and the expectations of the people who surround its narrator. The themes are conformity, work as identity, and the pressure to look ordinary in contemporary Japan.
