Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 5 stars
“My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me.”
Reading Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori) reminded me of all the times that I whispered ‘Fake it till you make it’ to myself in situations where I felt that I did not fit in and the manner in which I sometimes mimic those around me and express only those opinions that I know will be accepted, in order to feel included. The novel talks about society’s compulsion for everyone to fit into the roles created for them. The main character of the novel, Keiko Furukura, is a convenience store worker. That is her only identity as far as she is concerned. She is an awkward woman who does not understand the norms of society and nor does she understand the expectations that society has from a middle-aged woman. She imitates those around her not for herself but for the sake of the people she interacts with. Only in the convenience store does she feel like she is in control of herself and goes as far as to live her life outside also as a part of the store.
Even though the Convenience Store Woman is set in Japan, the novel explores universal themes, and the translation is nuanced, bringing to life the ‘assembly line’ atmosphere of the convenience store and the confusion that goes through Keiko when faced with ordinary experiences. The novel questions the concept of normalcy. “But once they get it into their heads that I’m not normal, since they all think they are normal, they’ll give me a hard time about it, won’t they?” Keiko asks her sister, who attempts to help her fit in with the people around her by creating lies to make up for Keiko’s ‘strange’ behaviour. But even that doesn’t last for long. Everyone, from her parents to those who she calls her friends, assumes that Keiko needs to ‘change’ herself or ‘be cured’ and that the way she behaves is something she has control over. Through this expectation, which baffles Keiko, Murata highlights the things that society asks of us at every stage of our life and in many ways, she mocks it.
“You eliminate the parts of your life that others find strange- maybe that’s what everyone means when they say they want to cure me.”
As a character, Keiko, with her innocence and wide-eyed manner of looking at the world, is almost like a child. (I won’t attempt to diagnose her because the book doesn’t do so.) The convenience store she works in has a manual that tells them how they must talk, interact with the customers, behave and what they must do at every hour of the day. She is like a cog in a machine, doing the same thing over and over, both in the convenience store and out of it. This monotony brings her comfort and she does not require a better job or a marriage like those around her want for her. But in some deep part of herself, Keiko craves the same inclusion she receives in the convenience store, even from the others in her life. When she realises that she won’t be accepted as she is, she looks for a manual to understand life. She asks her sister to give her specific instructions as to what she must do in order to be considered ‘cured’. But at the end of the day, she is a convenience store worker.
“More than a person, I’m a convenience store worker. Even if it means that I’m abnormal and can’t make a living and drop down dead, I can’t escape the fact. My very cells exist for the convenience store.”
Murata talks about the convenience store like it is a character in the book, bringing to life its sights, sounds and smells. Somehow this is the character that Keiko feels comfortable interacting with. As all the customers congratulate Keiko on the fact that the store remains unchanged, she finds comfort in the one constant thing in her life, the sounds of the store, that follow her home and even in her sleep. When the entry of Shiraha, a part-time worker at the store, both into her place of work and her life, shakes up the orderly manner in which the other workers at her store function, she doesn’t know how to cope with it. She realises that suddenly she is just a ‘female member of the human species’ even to her co-workers like she is to others in her life. The inclusion of Shiraha in her life also forces her to realise that as long as she fits into the role assigned to her in society, it doesn’t matter if she is happy or not; she is accepted. Murata has given us a character that, along with being absolutely unique, questions the things society takes for granted. The novel both made me laugh and sigh as I went on this journey with the convenience store woman. My only complaint about the book would be that while the ‘Stone Age’ analogy was funny at first, it felt repetitive when used over and over. Beyond that, the book was an extremely enjoyable and quick read.