If you love witty conversation, wry humor and quirky characters then Convenience Store Woman is the book for you! 

Originally written in Japanese, Convenience Store Woman on the surface is a story about Keiko Furukura, a woman whose own parents labeled "a strange child." Slow to develop, Keiko's parents were worried about her ability to "fit in" and be a "normal" adult. They wish for Keiko to have a "real job" and a boyfriend. However, Keiko loves her job at the convenience store and her only worry is the pressure to live up to her parents' expectations.

As the characters come and go through the store, we soon realize that perhaps Keiko is the one who comes closest to "normal."

Convenience Store Woman is an endearing story, a character study of a myriad of personalities and a tale of acceptance that will warm your heart and leave you wanting more. It also is a wonderful, subtle opportunity to catch a glimpse of the Japanese culture.

This is a beautiful, very short piece of fiction by Sayaka Murata, who still works part time at a convenience store.

My thanks to #Netgalley, the author, Granta Publications and Portobello Books for the opportunity to read this intriguing book.

This is a really different book, telling the story of a convience store worker it highlights how members of society have to fit in and how difficult it can be for someone if they don't measure up to societies norms.
The book is set in Japan I think and is interesting in the details that are included, descriptions if merchandise and food.
In the story the main character finds a place she feels comfortable in due to the rules imposed on the workers, she melds in with her workplace and becomes a part of it. However her family and friends feel she could do better in her job, even though she is happy in her life.
It's a thought provoking story and shows us another culture and the expectations of it's members.

I just loved this quirky little book. It tells the story of Keiko, a woman who has never fit in with her peers and the pleasure she has at finding her niche working in a convenience store. The premise is so simple and it is exquisitely understated in the delivery. Just as Keiko struggles to understand the interactions of the people around her, so we as the reader experience this dislocation vicariously through her. The musings on society and the way in which it dictates how one should behave, where one should be at any point in their life are fascinating and ring very true indeed. The prose is really clean and the translation is excellent, really allowing us to look through Keiko's eyes. The way she views the world is strange and not 'normal' but then the world she is viewing is strange and never normal! All in all, I found this to be a delightful exploration of what it means to fit in, stand out or live your own truth and I highly recommend it.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Keiko Furukura does not require much outside of the rhythms and structures of working part-time in a convenience store, but her few social acquaintances say that she needs to fix the way she lives her life. This smart and funny translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori follows Keiko as she continuously works towards finding her own way of gaining society's approval and acceptance. It's a wonderfully refreshing story about a young woman's journey towards self-acceptance, the discarding of ingrained societal norms, and creating your own version of happiness. I absolutely loved it.

A brilliant story that is certain to resonate with many young (or not-so-young) people from all around the world. The prose is simple yet captivating and Murata manages to portray the modern-day struggles her protagonist faces so masterfully. Society tends to be overly critical at times and we all often believe that we need to follow the rules and abide by others' expectations in order to be happy. This book proves the exact opposite and I couldn't be happier to have read it. Sometimes, we just need to follow our heart regardless of what other people think of our actions.

An odd but interesting slim book, this tells the story of a socially awkward woman who struggles to fit in, and works in a convenience store as it gives her life routine and order. The descriptions of her daily life and that of the store itself were strangely fascinating. Keiko, the main character, tries to fit in with her family's expectations, and changes her speech and behaviour to fit in with those around her. It feels almost like prying into her private world, and the reader can't help but feel compassion for her.
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

Keiko Furukura is a misfit – in her own words, a 'foreign object'. As a child, her odd behaviour attracts criticism and disgust; she doesn't understand why (in her own mind she is acting logically), but she understands enough to know that to be perceived as acceptable, she must change. To avoid further trouble, she passes the rest of her youth as quietly and unobtrusively as possible.

Everything changes when Keiko is a student: she gets a part-time job at a local convenience store, and the rhythms and routines of this role prove both addictive and instructive for her. We meet her 18 years later, still working at her beloved convenience store. She has learned to appear normal by observing colleagues, imitating their speech patterns and ways of dressing, but is struggling to fend off the enquiries of her friends and sister, who can't understand why she hasn't found a partner or got a 'better' job.

Convenience Store Woman is an unconventional love story. A love story between a woman and a convenience store. Not a particular store, either, but the bigger, broader idea of a store, the ur-store. It's a paean to the things that make life bearable, the things that make sense when the rest of the world seems indecipherable. Keiko's quirks are mostly loveable – and frequently actually quite understandable (she oftenis being more sensible than anyone else).

The character of Shiraha, the antagonist, is oddly timely since he's basically an incel. He doesn't fit into society either – at one point he even uses Keiko's term, 'foreign object'. He's weak, unattractive, and awkward; like Keiko, he is single and implicitly a virgin, but unlike Keiko, he is desperate to marry. And his own shortcomings don't stop him from berating Keiko for her uselessness and lecturing her with his favourite theory: that modern society is just like a 'Stone Age village' in which desirable women only go for alpha males. Luckily for her, she's impervious to all this nonsense and treats Shiraha in a weirdly satisfying way – neither arguing with him nor acquiescing, simply ignoring his rants and exploiting his situation to improve her own.

The book ends rather abruptly. I'd have liked to keep reading – I had become attached to Keiko, and I wanted to spend more time with this charming character. Simultaneously, I also wish there had been room to expand on Keiko's character and examine other sides to her personality. There's one disturbing moment that seems out of place and is never explored further. Still, I'm glad she gets her very own fairytale ending, however incomprehensible it might be to the rest of her circle.

I don’t know what it is about books set in Japan but there’s just something that draws me to them. I think it’s because the culture seems completely unique but at the same time there’s a lot of parallels with Britain (or at least stereotypes of Britishness) like the formality, the politeness and the implications of class (and yes, the tea drinking). I also associate a strong sense of day-glo weirdness with Japanese literature that I find completely fascinating – so I was immediately drawn to an odd little novella called Convenience Store Woman.

Keiko has never really fitted in with anyone else’s expectations of her. She is unsure of everything – how to act, how to talk and how to dress so she essentially copies others (right down to their speech patterns) in order to pass as “normal”. The world is a difficult and confusing place until she enters employment in a highly regimented convenience store, where she is told how to complete every stage of every task that is expected of her. Unfortunately, her job and single status is unacceptable to her group of friends, so she is forced to take drastic action in order to fit in.

I adored this super-cute novella. Keiko is such a likeable, quirky character and I could absolutely relate to the pressure that she felt to fit in with the expectations of society. I could also understand the struggles that she had with being an outsider and how she found solace in the regimented, ordered world of the convenience store. As an ex-employee of a corner shop I fondly remember working there, chatting to customers (usually the same people every week) even though I was usually hungover after a Friday night out (I was only 18). I enjoyed the repetitive nature of many of the tasks and the way that I was not expected to do anything too difficult, which made a great change from studying for my A Levels. I completely understood how someone like Keiko would also find this atmosphere soothing.

I loved the way that the book explored the idea that Keiko’s friends and family assumed that she was unhappy with her life just because it wasn’t typical of someone of her age. How often do we meet someone who is single and automatically try to romantically pair them up with our other single friends? How quickly would we dismiss a shop employee as potential marriage material? Or assume that someone with a degree working in a menial job was wasting their life? Maybe there’s a lesson in there that we should all be more accepting of each other’s choices.

I also loved the way that the book referenced different ideas about conformity. Keiko obviously doesn’t want to follow the traditional path of career/marriage/children but she does seek solace in the rules of her workplace. This made me think about whether everyone needs to live by some set of rules to be happy, or whether we all need somewhere to go where we feel like we fit in? I’m not sure but it’s certainly food for thought.

I really liked the ending of Convenience Store Woman and the way that Keiko finds a way to be true to herself. I got totally invested in her as a character so I was pleased to see that she got everything figured out in her own unique way.

Overall I thought that this was a cute, hilarious quick read with a host of brilliant characters that also managed to ask some pretty big questions. I understand that the book has been a huge hit abroad so I hope it does well over here too.

"The Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart has remained open ever since that day, its lights on without a break. Sometimes I use a calculator to work out the number of hours that have passed since then. The other day, the store was open on May 1 for the nineteenth time, having been open continuously for 157,800 hours. I’m now thirty-six years old, and the convenience-store-worker-me is eighteen. None of the other workers who did their training with me are here anymore, and we’re now on our eighth manager. Not a single product on sale in the store at that time is left. But I’m still here."

Convenience Store Woman, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori from Sayaka Murata's Japanese original (コンビニ人間 which won the Akutagawa Prize) is perhaps best, if lazily, pigeonholed as a Japanese equivalent of [book:Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine|31434883], but one without the troubling back story (Keiko's parents are highly affectionate) and, thankfully, without the schmaltzy ending.

(On the less positive side, the narrator Keiko also doesn't share my and Eleanor's love of tea:

Eleanor: I warmed the teapot, then spooned in some first flush Darjeeling ... Knowing no better my colleagues are content to drop a bag of poorest quality blended tea into a mug, scald it with boiling water, and then dilute any remaining flavour by adding fridge-cold milk. Once again, for some reason, it is I who am considered strange.

Keiko: "I hadn’t added a teabag since I didn’t really feel any need to drink flavored liquid".)

Keiko appears to be the perfectly trained worker for the ubiquitous and wonderful 24/7 convenience stores that are a feature of East Asia. As the novel opens she explains how she operates:

"A convenience store is a world of sound. From the tinkle of the door chime to the voices of TV celebrities advertising new products over the in-store cable network, to the calls of the store workers, the beeps of the bar code scanner, the rustle of customers picking up items and placing them in baskets, and the clacking of heels walking around the store. It all blends into the convenience store sound that ceaselessly caresses my eardrums. I hear the faint rattle of a new plastic bottle rolling into place as a customer takes one out of the refrigerator, and look up instantly. A cold drink is often the last item customers take before coming to the checkout till, and my body responds automatically to the sound.

Alerted by a faint clink of coins I turn and look over at the cash register. It’s a sound I’m sensitive to, since customers who come just to buy cigarettes or a newspaper often jingle coins in their hand or pocket. And yes: as I’d thought, a man with a can of coffee in one hand, the other hand in his pocket, is approaching the till. I quickly move through the store, slide behind the counter, and stand at the ready so as not to keep him waiting. “Irasshaimasé! Good morning, sir.”"

Except one is immediately alerted to an anomaly - a convenience store is for part-time temporary work, e.g. for students (or indeed authors such as Murata-san who also worked in a 7-11 while writing her novels), not a place where someone spends almost 20 years refining their craft to almost obsessive perfection. Keiko explains:

"The time before I was reborn as a convenience store worker is somewhat unclear in my memory. I was born into a normal family and lovingly brought up in a normal suburban residential area. But everyone thought I was a rather strange child.

There was the time when I was in nursery school, for example, when I saw a dead bird in the park. It was small, a pretty blue, and must have been someone’s pet . It lay there with its neck twisted and eyes closed, and the other children were all standing around it crying. One girl started to ask: “What should we—” But before she could finish I snatched it up and ran over to the bench where my mother was chatting with the other mothers. “What’s up, Keiko? Oh! A little bird . . . where did it come from I wonder?” she said gently, stroking my hair. “The poor thing. Shall we make a grave for it?”“Let’s eat it!” I said. “What?”“Daddy likes yakitori, doesn’t he?
...
There was also that big commotion soon after I started primary school, when some boys started fighting during the break time. The other kids started wailing, “Get a teacher!” and “Someone stop them!” And so I went to the tool shed, took out a spade, ran over to the unruly boys, and bashed one of them over the head. Everyone started screaming as he fell down clutching his skull. Seeing as he’d stopped moving , my attention turned to the other boy, and I raised the spade again. “Keiko-chan, stop! Please stop!” the girls shouted at me tearfully. Some teachers came over and, dumbfounded, demanded I explain myself. “Everyone was saying to stop them, so that’s what I did.” Violence was wrong, the bewildered teachers told me in confusion. “But everyone was saying to stop Yamazaki-kun and Aoki-kun fighting! I just thought that would be the quickest way to do it,” I explained patiently. Why on earth were they so angry? I just didn’t get it.

My parents were at a loss what to do about me, but they were as affectionate to me as ever. I’d never meant to make them sad or have to keep apologizing for things I did, so I decided to keep my mouth shut as best I could outside home. I would no longer do anything of my own accord, and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions."

When "the Smile Mart outside Hiiromachi Station opened on May 1, 1998, soon after I started university", she finds working their her perfect role, where being taught exactly how to behave in different circumstances is key to the job. On her training

"First we practiced the various phrases we needed to use in the store. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a line, our backs straight, we lifted the corners of our mouths to match the smiling face in the training poster and in turn called out the stock welcoming phrase: Irasshaimasé! The male trainer checked each of us one by one, instructing us to try again if our voices were too quiet or our expressions too stiff. “Miss Okamoto, don’t be so shy. Smile! Mr. Aizaki, speak up a bit! Try again. Miss Furukura, that’s perfect. Nice and spirited—keep it up!”I was good at mimicking the trainer’s examples and the model video he’d shown us in the back room.

It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech."

And on her first day, as her first customer approaches, she finally feels normal and accepted:

"I looked around and saw a man approaching with lots of discounted rice balls in his basket. “Irasshaimasé!” I called in exactly the same tone as before and bowed, then took the basket from him. At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt I’d become a part in the machine of society.I’ve been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society."

Keiko observes that to "mimic what everyone else was doing" is ultimately what everyone does in society, adopting the mannerisms, attitudes and speech patterns of those around them. But Keiko does it deliberately rather than naturally:

"My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me. I am currently made up of 30 percent Mrs. Izumi, 30 percent Sugawara, 20 percent the manager, and the rest absorbed from past colleagues such as Sasaki, who left six months ago, and Okasaki, who was our supervisor until a year ago. My speech is especially infected by everyone around me and is currently a mix of that of Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara. I think the same goes for most people. When some of Sugawara’s band members came into the store recently they all dressed and spoke just like her.

Outside work Mrs. Izumi is rather flashy, but she dresses the way normal women in their thirties do, so I take cues from the brand of shoes she wears and the label of the coats in her locker. Once she left her makeup bag lying around in the back room and I took a peek inside and made a note of the cosmetics she uses. People would notice if I copied her exactly, though, so what I do is read blogs by people who wear the same clothes she does and go for the other brands of clothes and kinds of shawls they talk about buying.
...
I’d noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy. If I went along with the manager when he was annoyed or joined in the general irritation at someone skiving off the night shift, there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too."

Albeit Keiko still struggles to really understand others and her rather direct, and potentially violent, solutions are never far away, such as when she meets her sister's new born child:

"The baby started to cry. My sister hurriedly picked him up and tried to soothe him. What a lot of hassle I thought. I looked at the small knife we’d used to cut the cake still lying there on the table: if it was just a matter of making him quiet, it would be easy enough."

And as he enters her mid 30s, her colleagues and friends start to enquire about how she can make a temporary university job a permanent career, and about her non-existent love life. Her carefully constructed facade of normality, assisted by her sister who gives her tips on coping, starts to crumble:

"“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? Have you ever been in love, Keiko?” Satsuki asked teasingly.

“In love?”

“Like, have you ever dated anyone? Come to think of it, I’ve never heard you talk about that sort of thing.”

“Oh I see. No, I haven’t,” I answered automatically. Everyone fell quiet and exchanged uncomfortable glances with each other. Too late I remembered that my sister had told me in such cases I should give a vague answer like:“ Well, there was someone I liked but I’m not a good judge of men.”"

Keiko's love of the convenience store comes because it is "a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated," where her slavish following of the training manual works to her favour. But now she realises that, similarly, "The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. 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."

One of her least successful co-workers is a loser (his favourite word for others) who comes to work in the store simply to find a wife, who refuses to follow the 'stupid' rules and is eventually fired for stalking a customer. Keiko has an inspiration - he needs a wife and she needs a facade of normality - they should get married. And so he moves into her tiny flat. His attitude is lazy and sexist:

"“When you’re a man, it’s all ‘go to work’ and ‘get married.’ And once you’re married, then it’s ‘earn more’ and ‘have children’! You’re a slave to the village. Society orders you to work your whole life. Even my testicles are the property of the village! Just by having no sexual experience they treat you as though you’re wasting your semen.”“I can see how stressful that would be.”“Your uterus belongs to the village too, you know. The only reason the villagers aren’t paying it any attention is because it’s useless. I want to spend my whole life doing nothing. For my whole life, until I die, I want to just breathe without anyone interfering in my life.That’s all I wish for,” he finished, holding his palms together as if in supplication."

But Keiko treats him like a household pet, making him spend his days in the bathtub, to the bemusement of her sister who is initially excited thinking Keiko has found love at last:

"“Oh, but it’s about feeding time anyway.” I took some boiled potatoes and cabbage from the cooking pan and put them along with some rice into a washbasin I kept in the kitchen and took it to the bathroom. Shiraha was sitting on cushions he’d stuffed into the bathtub and fiddling with his smartphone. I held his feed out for him, and he took it. “The bathroom? Is he in the bath?”“Yes, it’s really cramped when we’re together in the room, so I’m keeping him in there.” My sister looked incredulous."

Unfortunately Keiko's plan backfires - whereas her co-workers had largely left her unbothered, now they think she is in a relationship they are even more curious, which interrupts the important work of the convenience store to the perfectionist Keiko's annoyance:

“ Look, it isn’t that there’s anything between us! He’s just staying at my place now, that’s all. What’s important is that we haven’t even started preparing the chicken skewers yet!”“What?” Mrs. Izumi screeched. “You mean you’re living together?”“Seriously?” put in the manager. They sounded so excited I decided it was useless saying anything more and rushed over to the freezer, took out the boxes of chicken skewers, and ran with my arms full back to the cash register. I was shocked by their reaction. As a convenience store worker, I couldn’t believe they were putting gossip about store workers before a promotion in which chicken skewers that usually sold at 130 yen were to be put on sale at the special price of 110 yen. What on earth had happened to the pair of them?

I’d always had a lot of respect for manager #8. He was a hard worker and I’d thought of him as the perfect colleague, but now I was sick to death of him only ever talking about Shiraha whenever we met. Until now, we’d always had meaningful workermanager discussions: “It’s been hot lately, so the sales of chocolate desserts are down,”or “There’s a new block of flats down the road, so we’ve been getting more customers in the evening,”or “They’re really pushing the ad campaign for that new product coming out the week after next, so we should do well with it.”Now, however, it felt like he’d downgraded me from store worker to female of the human species."

And persuaded by her new partner to leave the store and look for more permanent employment, Keiko realises her life has lost its meaning:

"I had judged everything on the basis of whether it was the sensible thing to do for the convenience store, but now I’d lost that standard . There was nothing to guide me over whether an action was rational or not. Before I became a store worker, I must have been following some kind of logic in my judgments, but I’d forgotten whatever guiding principles I’d followed back then."

Action needs to be taken ....

A very quick and light read, but highly entertaining and with some important things to say about society and its tolerance of those who don't fit the normal criteria.

The second work of Japanese fiction I’ve read this year and I’m fast becoming a fan. In this book we meet Keiko, a 37-year-old who, despite higher education, has spent all her working life in the same convenience store. She finds it suits her - an unwavering routine, no real surprises, the only changes being the constant turnover of managers and colleagues. Keiko has difficulty with social interaction, with interpreting others’ signals and making an appropriate response. She is well aware of this, though, and becomes an accomplished mimic, adapting her speech patterns and her personal presentation to those around her. So when, after 18 happy years at the convenience store, she succumbs to family and peer pressure to step further into ‘normality’, give up her job and acquire a boyfriend we see her begin to lose her grip.

The author has created a thoroughly engaging character in Keiko. It could so easily have gone the other way with a couple of outrageous thoughts and actions she quickly realised were over the top but perhaps not why. Overall, though, I enjoyed her offbeat take on life and was rooting for her to be able to live on her own terms. A thoughtful and mildly humorous book (particularly her attitude to the ‘adopted pet animal’ she introduces to her home, I’d recommend to fans of quirky, slightly noir fiction.

Keiko is an oddball. She always has been. Now 36 years, old she has been working in the same convenience store for eighteen years. She counts how many hours that is, how many managers have come and gone in her time there since the day the store opened. She eats just enough food to feed her body to get through her shifts. Keiko finds it hard to fit in.

Which is why the convenience store helps her to survive. The routine, the company rules, the store manual – all of these give her structure. She looks to others to give her an image of how she should be; she mimics the way others speak and copies their style of clothes. Then she allows an ex-colleague to move in with her, both of them thinking that the outward appearance of a couple living together will make them fit in to the wider society – Keiko’s family and friends cannot understand how a woman in her 30s can still work part-time in a convenience store. But this move, rather than solving anything, only makes matters worse and, leaving her employment, Keiko feels even more of a disconnect from the world. By the end of the book she finds herself tidying up and rearranging shelves in another convenience store and realises that this, indeed, is her true calling.

Anyone who has ever worked in retail or a job with routine will recognise moments of comedy as Keiko describes her world, but there are also points that really make you think about what society expects of us. In Japan in particular the needs of the individual and the needs of the wider society often provoke discussion, and this novel clearly resonates in a country desperately trying to adjust to being a more outward-looking modern nation. But many of the issues raised affect us all: how much should we care how others view us? Should conformity (to work, marriage, appearance) stifle individuality? When does alienation become mental illness?

This award-winning short novel (coming in at under 200 pages it is a quick read) is both light-hearted and serious in its intent, and the character of Keiko – for all her faults and dubious ethics – is a joy. A good read – I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I kind of enjoyed this. I didn't dislike it and it wasn't bad. It just doing do much for me personally.

I just adore Keiko!

Keiko works part-time in a convenience store. She lives and loves her job, and does it well. But the rest of the world would prefer her just to be 'normal'. And she doesn't want to upset anyone.

This was a gorgeous, funny book about trying to fit in, but ultimately preferring to be happy. If you've ever given up a customer-service role you loved for something 'sensible with prospects', or had to fend off 'helpful' marriage suggestions from old friends on the weddings-and-funerals circuit, you might just identify with her.