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Bookseller recommendation
“Keiko loves rules. Having worked a part-time job in a Japanese convenience store for 18 years, she loves having a corporate script to recite, sales goals to reach, and a list of tasks to complete. What she doesn't love - or even understand - are the more complicated rules of society at large. She doesn't want a husband, or children, or a real job. What she does want is a satisfactory answer to the endless personal questions that will allow her to be left alone. Convenience Store Woman is a quirky and hilarious look at society and its misfits, and what happens when we try to bend ourselves to the needs of others.”
— Rachel • The Book Table
Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world. So when she takes a job in a convenience store while at the university, they are delighted. For her part, she finds a predictable world in the convenience store, mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkersâ style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person.
However, eighteen years later, at age thirty-six, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only a few friends. She feels comfortable in her life but is aware that she is not living up to societyâs expectations, causing her family to worry about her. When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keikoâs contented stasisâbut will it be for the better?
Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much a part of life in Japan. With some laugh-out-loud moments prompted by the disconnect between Keikoâs thoughts and those of the people around her, she provides a sharp look at Japanese society and the pressure to conform, as well as penetrating insights into the female mind.
Convenience Store Woman is a fresh, charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine that recalls Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and AmĂŠlie.
Sayaka Murata is one of Japanâs most exciting contemporary writers. She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which was the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman, her English-language debut and winner of one of Japanâs most prestigious literary prizes, the Akutagawa Prize. Her work has appeared in Freemanâs, Granta, and elsewhere.
Nancy Wu has narrated audiobooks since 2004, winning three AudioFile Earphones Awards. A New York theater, television, and film actor, she has recorded in studios all over the worldâfrom Italy to Switzerland to Thailand. Her credits include Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Hope & Faith, All My Children, Made for Each Other, and the Oscar-nominated film Frozen River.
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She lives at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.
Reviews
âNarrator Nancy Wu gives Keiko a doll-like voice, a funny mix of mechanical and childishness that aptly captures the characterâs otherness.â
âQuirky Keiko Furukura comes to awkward life in Nancy Wuâs hilarious narrationâŚan energetic delivery that keeps listeners engaged from the first chapterâŚWu has us laughing out loud, especially at Keikoâs unexpected forays into love. This is a rollicking storyâŚpaired with a narrator who can maximize the charactersâ discomfort for our humor.â
âA weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book.â
"Brilliant, witty, and sweetâŚ[Keikoâs] story of conforming for convenience (literally) is one that women all over the world know all too well.â
âWritten in plain-spoken prose, the slim volume focuses on a character who in many ways personifies a demographic panic in Japan.â
â[Keiko] is an anti-Bartleby, abandoning any shred of identity outside of her workâŚThe book itself is tranquilâdreamy, evenârooting for its employee-store romance from the bottom of its synthetic heart.â
âGetting to hear the Irasshaimase! greetings sprinkled throughoutâŚwith their proper Japanese inflection is one key to this audiobookâs excellence. But Nancy Wuâs bright, emotionally detached reading of protagonist Miss Furukura is what transforms the book into a harrowing look inside a potential sociopathâs mind.â
â[In this] small, elegant, and deadpan novel from Japan, a woman senses that society finds her strange, so she culls herself from the herd before anyone else can do itâŚ[An] offbeat exploration of what we must each leave behind to participate in the world.â
âMurata herself spent years as a convenience store employee. And one pleasure of this book is her detailed portrait of how such a place actually works. Yet the bookâs true brilliance lies in Murataâs way of subverting our expectations.â
âA hilarious novelâŚConvenience Store Woman mocks the culture of work, the employeeâs devotion to their patron saint, and pokes fun at the conservative mindset. For what is a young woman worth if she has neither professional ambition nor a desire to get married?â
âA love story pulled out of the deep-freeze shelves of the heartâŚTrue love is the simple and beautiful moral of this unusual yet uplifting story.â
âA spare, quietly brilliant novelâŚThough she feels like the odd one out, itâs her frank appraisal of the systems of the world that reveals the absurdity of everyone else.â
âMagicalâŚSayaka Murata has written the 7-11 Madame BovaryâŚ.This is a love story. Only the love affair here is between a woman and the convenience store in which she works.â
âMurataâs brilliant Convenience Store WomanâŚhas been seen as a Gothic romance between a âmisfit and a storeâ and asâŚan artful grotesque of modern personal branding.â
âA hilariously deadpan, absurdist send-up of rigorous social norms in aging, postwar JapanâŚKeikoâs fidelity to her role as a cog in the machine is put to the test and the result is as quietly unsettling as any one of Kafkaâs short stories.â
âStunningâŚThis is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a âfunctioning adultâ in todayâs world.â
âA dazzling English-language debut in a crisp translation by Takemori, rich in scathingly entertaining observations on identity, perspective, and the suffocating hypocrisy of ânormalâ society.â
âWhile Murataâs novel focuses on life in Japanese culture, her storytelling will resonate with all people and experiences.â
âMurata skillfully navigates the line between the bookâs wry and weighty concerns and ensures readers will never conceive of the âpristine aquariumâ of a convenience store in quite the same way. A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.â
âQuirky, deadpan, poignant, and quietly profound, it is a gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the world.â
âA haunting, dark, and often hilarious take on societyâs expectations of the single woman. As an extra bonus, it totally transformed my experience of going to convenience stores in Tokyo.â
âI was really amazed by Convenience Store Woman and the particular reality it exquisitely portrays.â
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