Convenience Store woman is a short love story between a misfit and a store. Convenience store woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform to it as well as fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

Keiko Furukura in her mid-thirties is an unmarried woman who has been single all her life. She has been working in a convenience store for the past eighteen years which is only place and purpose in her life. She doesn’t understand conventional behaviour and mimics her coworkers' styles of speech and dress to perform social norms. Keiko’s character is well portrayed as observant and perceptive. A major theme of this book is how “abnormal “people are ostracised from society. Keiko Furukura gives the store unconditional devotion and the convenience store – a haven of rules and regulations – gives her an incomparable sense of belonging and order.

Sayaka Murata has expertly characterised a central location i.e. a microcosm of many things such as uniformity of Japanese labour force, or the Japanese preoccupation with cleanliness. It showed the hypocrisy of Japanese expectations towards women, while unmarried women are seen as outcasts and not fulfilling their societal duties.

In this society Murata remarks that “the normal world has no room for exceptions and always eliminates foreign objects, anyone who is lacking is disposed of”.  The novel was published by Murata 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 ostracised for being ‘abnormal’. 

Our group rated the book 7/10

Neena Chandola