Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
During the second half of the pandemic, or as others like to call it “2021,” I haven’t really been able to get into books. My days all feel monotonous and there wasn’t a book that was able to get me out of that weariness until Convenience Store Woman came into my life.
A friend recommended this book by Japanese author Sayaka Murata. She felt entranced by it, and when I looked it up and realized it wasn’t more than 130 pages, I thought it would be a good dip back into reading anything longer than a 10-page article.
I was immersed. I was finally out of my reality of days that can’t be distinguished from each other, straight into a reality where…the same thing was happening to the protagonist.
Keiko Furukura is a 36-year-old, you guessed it, convenience store worker. Every day looks the same, she wakes up and takes basic care of herself because that’s what’s good for her job, the same she’s had since she was 18 years old.
No one in her life, not her family, coworkers, or her few friends from school, understands why she’s been at the store so long. She doesn’t have a better position, she doesn’t have a husband, kids, not a partner, no ambitions. She is content with her life as it is, and no one can stand it.
“People who are considered normal enjoy putting those who aren't on trial, you know.”
The novel by Murata, published in 2016, wonders at the meaning of conformity in a world that asks us to follow the guidebook and at the same time, despises us for it. You have to conform and rebel, all in the right measure and in the correct way, or else, you’ll be ostracized for being “abnormal.”
To want and to have
Keiko Furukara is a woman who very obviously has something wrong with her, but she doesn’t seem to know what as she narrates her own life. She explains the way she thinks, the way she feels, and everything makes sense. As a reader you relate to her — and that’s damn scary.
Because as much as we understand her, we as readers are part of that same society that makes her feel “othered.” We follow rules, we have ambitions, we understand that we can’t stay put and even if we don’t agree with it, we still do it as “functional members of society.”
But Keiko forces us to ask ourselves, what is ambition? Why do we want the best car, the best job, the best family, the most money? Are those ideas ours, or are we fighting every day with ourselves for something we don’t even really want that much?
She ends up asking herself the same question, should I strive for more? Her family sure seems happy when she does some things that appear to go towards the normal path, which for women is not only to have a career, but to have a man by her side, and after a certain age, it seems like any man would be the right man — better than a woman alone.
“She's far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine.”
The convenience store of life
When Sayaka Murata, the author, was 18, she worked in a convenience store. It’s funny how it’s one of those places where we spend time almost every day, gets us out of trouble, as per the pandemic are essential, but we barely think about the people who work in them.
Murata explained in an interview with The New York Times that she "wanted to illustrate how odd the people who believe they are ordinary or normal are", that she chose Keiko as "someone who defied conventional thinking, particularly in a conformist society".
Aren’t all jobs pure monotony, with the sensation of a different routine when you finally get holidays or leave early to see a friend?
This review, if you’ve read this far, is full of questions. That’s the way the novel left me, wondering, wondering so much about my life and wanting to read so many more books. And I am so thankful for that.
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