Published: 2016 (Bungeishunju)
Setting: Tokyo
Summary: Keiko works at the Smile Convenience store in an office district, and it is what defines her. She has worked their eighteen years, and the rhythms of her life match the sound of the bell, the speech patterns of her coworkers, and the hours of her shift. Keiko has long since ceased to try and define herself as “normal”, and that is what makes her extraordinary. Keiko doesn’t give into the pressures of having a career outside the store, getting married, or even having sex. Throughout this novel, Keiko reads and dissects those around her, all the while taking the reader through a series of self-discoveries that show her to be actively trying to fit into society. She sees others as assuaging their anxieties and fears by projecting onto her, and she is willing to keep those realizations to herself, until she meets Shirahara. Shirahara is an unemployed part-time stalker who wants to unburden himself from the expectations from the world. Shirahara hides from what makes him abnormal in others eyes, and eventually persuades Keiko to leave what makes her whole, the store. Keiko and Shirahara end up living together out of convenience, only to be harassed by her sister and his sister-in-law, as well as those in the store. After Keiko leaves the store to look for a “proper” job, she enters another convenience store, and her connection to who she is comes back to life. Keiko leaves Shirahara and accepts, finally, that her one true devotion and purpose is to be a convenience store woman.
The author of this novel, Sayaka Murata, has worked at least part-time in a convenience store most of her adult life. I have also worked in a convenience store, only for 5 months, but the way she describes it brings back a flood of memories of my time working there. This fact alone makes this novel powerful, but after reading the reverence that Murata has for the convenience store it is hard to deny her talent. Her very cells, “exist for the convenience store.” So often we as humans search endlessly for some form of meaning in our lives, usually falling into the same pratfalls. Keiko pushes past the mundane, by embracing what lost souls see as the mundane. In a world that tries to “eliminate foreign objects,” Murata writes a character which is less foreign than we might want to believe. Vanity has no place in Keiko’s world, and yet she is deftly aware of how it shapes everyone around her. We can learn something from Murata, and start giving into our own “Convenience store animal.”
Quote of the book: “So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me. Finally, I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me” (81).
Favorite character: Keiko, this is one of the most endearing characters I have interacted with in a good while. Her character is able to penetrate something inside me which yearns for understanding.
Favorite setting: The Smile Convenience Store, the chime of the bell and the feel of a felt-tip marker writing a summer promo for chicken skewers never felt so monumental.
Please Stay for: Everything, this novel benefits from its concise writing and limited length. Although Keiko could do well in a longer novel, the shortness of it lends it a focus on the core of her character that doesn’t feel forced or manufactured.
Please Question: The quick turn of Shirahara from criminal stalker to annoying roommate. This seemed a bit forced, but the core of his character brought something out in Keiko which was needed and beautiful.
Will Reviews Things 