convenience store woman by sayaka murata
Convenience Store Woman is a book I did not expect to deeply enjoy. Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old single woman is content with her work at a convenience store. In fact, she has been working there for 18 years ever since its establishment. But the world around her seems to have different opinions, with her friends and family teaching her to be “normal” and hoping for her to be “cured”. In less than 200 pages, Murata succinctly portrayed the pressure of being unmarried and childless in your thirties, societal expectations to conform, and the idea of productivity being equal to worth.
From a young age, Keiko was depicted as weird by her preschool classmates and teachers. Although it was never clearly stated in the book whether she had a mental disability, Keiko’s neurodiversity branded her as a foreign object to the people around her, and even to herself. She never really learned how to be a “person”. Because of this, working in the convenience store gave her a new identity altogether — a worker, something that can be done perfectly while following a manual.
Here in the convenience store, we’re not men and women. We're all store workers.
There was a lot of misogyny and sexism depicted in this book, mostly by Keiko’s friends and her workmate, Shiraha. More than just her being different, they pressure her into something that completely coincides with society’s norms. Her consistent job and the lack of a partner and a child make everyone think that she’s doing something wrong with her life, especially at her age.
More than just being okay with being different, Convenience Store Woman talks about being happy despite everyone’s objections and opinions on how to live your life. At some point in the book, I was excited for her to finally step out of her comfort zone. But the ending made me think that maybe she didn’t want to — and there’s nothing wrong with that. Keiko is one with the convenience store, and there is nothing anyone in her life can do about it.
A fair warning, though: reading this made me crave all the food mentioned. I instantly searched for recipes for cream cheese and tuna mayonnaise rice balls.
My Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Translated by: Ginny Tapley Takemori
Genres: Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Asian Literature
Trigger Warnings: misogyny, sexism, toxic relationship, mentions of rape
This piece was originally posted on WordPress on August 3, 2022 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.