Sayaka Murata is the author of many books, including Convenience Store Woman, winner of Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. She used to work part-time in a convenience store, which inspired this novel. Murata has been named a Freeman's "Future of New Writing" author, and her work has appeared in Granta and elsewhere. In 2016, Vogue Japan selected her as a Woman of the Year.
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryū Murakami. She lives at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.
Praise for Convenience Store Woman: Shortlisted for the Best
Translated Book Award
Longlisted for the Believer Book Award
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Boston
Globe, Literary Hub, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Electric Literature,
Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, WBUR, Hudson, Bustle, Chatelaine,
and Globe and Mail
An Indies Introduce Title
An Indie Next Pick
An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Literature and Fiction)
An Elle Magazine Best Summer Book Pick
One of Vogue's Books to Thrill, Entertain, and Sustain You This
Summer "In Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, a small,
elegant and deadpan novel, a woman senses that society finds her
strange, so she culls herself from the herd before anyone else can
do it . . . Casts a fluorescent spell . . . A thrifty and offbeat
exploration of what we must each leave behind to participate in the
world."--Dwight Garner, New York Times "Alienation gets deliciously
perverse treatment in Convenience Store Woman . . . Murata 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 book's true brilliance lies in Murata's way of
subverting our expectations . . . With bracing good humor . . .
Murata celebrate[s] the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost
of being themselves."--John Powers, NPR "Fresh Air" "The novel
borrows from Gothic romance, in its pairing of the human and the
alluringly, dangerously not. It is a love story, in other words,
about a misfit and a store . . . Keiko's self-renunciations reveal
the book to be a kind of grim post-capitalist reverie: she is an
anti-Bartleby, abandoning any shred of identity outside of her work
. . . It may make readers anxious, but the book itself is
tranquil--dreamy, even--rooting for its employee-store romance from
the bottom of its synthetic heart."--Katy Waldman, New Yorker
"Keiko, a defiantly oddball 36-year-old woman, has worked in a
dead-end job as a convenience store cashier in Tokyo for half her
life. She lives alone and has never been in a romantic
relationship, or even had sex. And she is perfectly happy with all
of it . . . Written in plain-spoken prose, the slim volume focuses
on a character who in many ways personifies a demographic panic in
Japan."--Motoko Rich, New York Times (profile) "As intoxicating as
a sake mojito, Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman is a rare
treat: a literary prize-winner that's also a page-turner. Its
heroine, Keiko, is an 18-year-old Tokyo misfit who yearns to be
like everyone else. Then she lands a job at Hiiromachi Station
Smile Mart, one of those enchanting Japanese wonderlands that are
equal parts 7-Eleven, McDonald's, and Starbucks. As Keiko finds
liberation in the self-effacing rituals of being a good convenience
store employee, Murata offers a smart, deliciously perverse look at
everything from how mini-marts actually work to the rules, many of
them invisible, that ultimately define our identity. And because
the book is bracingly brief, you can down it in one afternoon
gulp."--John Powers, Vogue "It's the novel's cumulative,
idiosyncratic poetry that lingers, attaining a weird, fluorescent
kind of beauty all of its own. The world of the store with its
dented cans and rice balls and barcodes and scanners, and Keiko's
shivery, unashamedly sensual response as a 'convenience store
animal' who can 'hear the store's voice telling me what it wanted,
how it wanted to be.' The book's title is more than perfect, for
this, you soon realize, is a love story. Keiko's love story: the
convenience is all hers."--Julie Myerson, Guardian "Murata draws a
poignant portrait of what happens when a woman's oppression meets a
man's grievance--and one of them has to give . . . It seems all too
fitting that Murata's disaffected man, Shiraha, lashes out at a
cold world with demands and reproach, while the female narrator
quietly seeks out a space within that unwelcoming world where she
can contribute. To anyone living in the world today, in Japan or
the U.S., it should come as little surprise that the sharpest
consequences for a man's pain and a woman's pain both fall, in the
end, on women."--Claire Fallon, Huffington Post "Brilliant, witty,
and sweet in ways that recall Amélie and Shopgirl. Keiko, a Tokyo
woman in her 30s, finds her calling as a checkout girl at a
national convenience store chain called Smile Mart: Quirky Keiko,
who has never fit in, can finally pretend to be a normal person.
Her story of conforming for convenience (literally) is one that
woman all over the world know all too well, as is her family's
pressure to get married and settle down, but Murata's sparkly
writing and knack for odd, beautiful details are totally her
own."--Vogue, "13 Books to Thrill, Entertain, and Sustain You This
Summer" "An exhilaratingly weird and funny Japanese novel about a
long-term convenience store employee. Unsettling and totally
unpredictable--my copy is now heavily underlined."--Sally Rooney,
Guardian "A quiet masterpiece that offers a refreshing perspective
on human nature through the disarming observations of a social
misfit . . . Seldom has a narrator been so true to a lack of self,
and so triumphantly other. This strange heroism may explain why the
differences between Keiko Furukura and the reader gradually
dwindle, and we come to perceive just how tenuous and unconsidered
our own attitudes and constructs are, how curious our claims of
personhood, and how odd and improbable our own story."--David
Wright, Seattle Times "Reading Convenience Store Woman--a spare,
quietly brilliant novel about an offbeat woman whose life revolves
around the convenience store she works at--is like being lulled
into a soft calm . . . Though she feels like the odd one out, it's
her frank appraisal of the systems of the world that reveals the
absurdity of everyone else. Whey has society at large agreed to
live by these arbitrary rules? And why does everyone else treat
Keiko's rejection of these rules like a threat?"--BuzzFeed "This
magical little book performs this neat accordion track in sentences
so clean and crisp it's like they were laminated and placed before
you, one at a time, in a well-windex'd cooler. And thus Sayaka
Murata has written the 7-11 Madame Bovary . . . This is a love
story. Only the love affair here is between a woman and the
convenience store in which she works."--John Freeman, Literary Hub
"Sayaka Murata's novel Convenience Store Woman playfully
illustrates the daily routines and ruminations of an eccentric
Tokyo salesclerk."--Elle "A personal favorite . . . The prose is as
crisp as is the aesthetic of [Japan]"--Lauren Christensen, CBS This
Morning "Knock-you-off-your-feet good, sucking you wholesale into
the strange brain of its narrator, Keiko Furukura, and carrying you
quickly through a smartly constructed plot . . . Reading
Convenience Store Woman feels like being beamed down onto a foreign
planet, which turns out to be your own . . . May we buy out
bookstores' stocks of Convenience Store Woman, and yell Sayaka
Murata's name from the rooftops."--Alison Tate Lewis, Electric
Literature "Sayaka Murata's brilliant Convenience Store Woman can
be read as a meditation on the world of personal branding . . . It
has been seen as a Gothic romance between a 'misfit and a store'
and as a fictionalized account of how young people in Japan are
increasingly giving up on sex, to name just two readings. It's a
sign of excellent literature to be able to effortlessly hold up
multiple interpretations at once. Murata's book is no exception:
It's all of these things while also rendering an artful grotesque
of modern personal branding."--The Millions "Convenience Store
Woman subverts the status quo with the lowliest of settings and the
most unlikely warrior. Cunning and seductive . . . [it] joins the
literature of refusal, along with Melville's 'Bartleby the
Scrivener' (the clerk who 'prefers not to'), Beckett's minimal
humans, who dwell in trash bins and sand heaps, and Kafka's hapless
office workers, who try to remain invisible while being watched . .
. Murata's comedy brilliantly reverses the notion that we lose
ourselves as cogs in a machine. In anonymity, Keiko slips the knot
of convention. For her, the rescue is in the catastrophe."--Laurie
Stone, Women's Review of Books "A novel that proves sylphlike;
spare in its contents, with a masterfully deceptive comic veneer
that keeps the reader turning the page. Even with peculiar and
macabre elements aplenty . . . Murata has penned an unlikely
feminist tale that unflinchingly depicts the social constructs of
being a single woman."--Zyzzyva "Can a 36-year-old woman find
happiness working at a 'Smile Mart' for the rest of her life?
That's the sneakily subversive proposition floated in this sly
little novel."--Newsday "Quirky, memorable . . . A neat and
pleasing fable about the virtues and pleasures of conformity that
could only be Japanese."--Times (UK) "Engaging . . . A sure-fire
hit of the summer."--Irish Times "Keiko Furukura loves her job. In
fact, she started at the Smile Mart when she was 18 and now she's
36, and there's nowhere else she'd rather be . . . Despite her
complete lack of normal emotions and responses she's always trying
to be more like other people, which is why she succumbs to the
pressure to find a man and settle down. She finds him, of course,
at the convenience store, but once she's married, they make her
leave the job, and that's when the trouble starts."--WYPR, "Weekly
Reader" "Convenience Store Woman may seem like a light and easy
summer read about a Japanese shopgirl, but is actually a cutting
commentary on the pressure society puts on its citizens,
particularly single women . . . Offers a sharp observation into
this small slice of Japanese life."--South China Morning Post "A
deceptively breezy novel . . . The book is a sly commentary on
social pressures for conformity in Japan, told through the
engrossing first-person character portrait of Keiko Furukura . . .
Convenience Store Woman, though spare, holds outsized lessons about
worth, work, expectations, and contentment that translate well into
our changing U.S. economy. Keiko takes the reader through an
eye-opening and unconventional argument about what does--and
doesn't--make a happy life."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Deceivingly
short and plainly written . . . The full extent of Keiko's
strangeness, with her sharp edges and moral ambiguity, takes us by
surprise, making this a brave book and Murata an unflinching,
exciting writer."--Daily Californian "A slim, spare and
difficult-to-define little book, both very funny and achingly sad
in turns, told from the point of view of a woman who's trying to
find her place in the world . . . This empathetic novel is also a
touching exploration of loneliness and alienation, feelings and
conditions that, for better or for worse, can be recognized by
people worldwide."--Book Reporter "A refreshing narrator with a
fascinating voice . . . Together, Murata and her protagonist lead a
novel that is delightfully candid and unexpectedly empowering, a
feminist tale that blooms inside the small world of a 24-hour
convenience store . . . This is Keiko's very own hero's journey, a
brilliantly crafted one that defies standards for women."--Harvard
Crimson "With its understated prose and frequently deadpan
narration, many moments of Convenience Store Woman are
simultaneously sweet and darkly funny . . . This slim novel [has] a
startling heft . . . Possessed by a weird, marvelous
momentum."--New York Journal of Books "Full of wisdom about our
modern age . . . Murata's brief, whimsical, deeply insightful and
pleasantly thought-provoking novel reminds us what torture social
life can be for those too honest and authentic to be deluded by its
trappings."--PopMatters "Murata's strange and quirky novel was a
runaway hit in Japan, and Ginny Tapley Takemori's English
translation introduces it to a new group of readers--a slim,
entrancing read that can be consumed in one sitting."--Passport "An
achievement . . . Murata's just-below-the-surface acerbity is most
skillfully deployed in examining how what we do distorts what we
are . . . The result is more than just brief, breezy, and pithy--it
is a look at how extraordinarily frightening ordinary is turning
out to be."--Arts Fuse "Unlike the youthfully airy heroines in the
novels of writer Banana Yoshimoto, Keiko is almost a Kafkaesque
character, deadly earnest in absurd circumstances . . . Murata
shines in describing the setting--the 'pristine aquarium'--that is
Keiko's sole link to existence. In smooth, lucid prose, the
convenience store comes to life in its inner workings and sounds,
from the tinkle of the door chime to the beeps of the bar code
scanner and the rattle of bottles in the refrigerator."--Japan
Times "A sweet, charming, and insightful book about comfort zones
and the pressure to conform."--HelloGiggles "The character of
Furukura is a delight. She is original and charming but never
gimmicky or twee . . . Too accomplished to boil down to a single
message, but this seems to be one idea that runs through it. People
say a lot of things--some true, some misguided, some calculating
and cruel. This is an unavoidable part of living in a society. The
challenge is to listen past those voices and balance their demands
with whatever higher calling we hear beyond."--Nippon.com "Murata's
slim and stunning Akutagawa Prize-winning novel follows 36-year-old
Keiko Furukura, who has been working at the same convenience store
for the last 18 years, outlasting eight managers and countless
customers and coworkers . . . Murata's smart and sly novel, her
English-language debut, is a critique of the expectations and
restrictions placed on single women in their 30s. This is a moving,
funny, and unsettling story about how to be a 'functioning adult'
in today's world."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The
prestigious Akutagawa Prize-winning Murata, herself a part-time
'convenience store woman, ' makes a dazzling English-language debut
in a crisp translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori rich in scathingly
entertaining observations on identity, perspective, and the
suffocating hypocrisy of 'normal' society."--Booklist (starred
review) "A sly take on modern work culture and social conformism,
told through one woman's 18-year tenure as a convenience store
employee . . . Murata provides deceptively sharp commentary on the
narrow social slots people--particularly women--are expected to
occupy and how those who deviate can inspire bafflement, fear, or
anger in others . . . Murata skillfully navigates the line between
the book's wry and weighty concerns and ensures readers will never
conceive of the 'pristine aquarium' of a convenience store in quite
the same way. A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language
debut."--Kirkus Reviews "Murata's writing, nicely rendered by
Takemori's translation, uses the characters of Keiko and Shiraha to
deliver a thought-provoking commentary on the meaning of conforming
to the expectations of society. While Murata's novel focuses on
life in Japanese culture, her storytelling will resonate with all
people and experiences."--Library Journal "Convenience Store Woman
is a gem of a book. Quirky, deadpan, poignant, and quietly
profound, it is a gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the
world--and if we were truly being honest, I suspect that would be
most of us."--Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being"What
a weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book this is. Sayaka
Murata is an utterly unique and revolutionary voice. I tore through
Convenience Store Woman with great delight."--Jami Attenberg, New
York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up
"A darkly comic, deeply unsettling examination of contemporary
life, of alienation, of capitalism, of identity, of conformity.
We've all been to this convenience store, whether it's in Japan or
somewhere else."--Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
of The Sympathizer "This is a story about what's normal and not, a
drama played on a stage so violently plain it becomes as vivid and
surprising as an alien planet. I loved Convenience Store Woman: its
brevity, its details, its opinions about life."--Robin Sloan,
author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore "I picked up this novel
on a trip to Japan and couldn't put it down. A haunting, dark, and
often hilarious take on society's expectations of the single woman.
As an extra bonus, it totally transformed my experience of going to
convenience stores in Tokyo."--Elif Batuman, author of The
Idiot"Convenience Store Woman is a mighty fine book, completely
charming. Sayaka Murata is a wonderful writer."--Rabih Alameddine,
author of An Unnecessary Woman "Instructions: Open book. Consume
contents. Feel charmed, disturbed, and weirdly in love. Do not
discard."--Jade Chang, author of The Wangs Vs. the World "Murata
creates an original and surreal world in the most unlikely places.
Furukura, the convenience store woman, is a strange, complex,
gripping protagonist who inadvertently propels her own story forth
through a series of subtle actions yet it is through these actions
and also the spareness of the author's prose that we see what a
master Murata truly is. This book is not only readable, it is fun,
thought provoking and at times outrageous and outrageously funny.
It is sure to be a standout of the year."--Weike Wang, author of
Chemistry "This novel made me laugh. It was the first time for me
to laugh in this way: it was absurd, comical, cute . . . audacious,
and precise. It was overwhelming."--Hiromi Kawakami, author of The
Nakano Thrift Shop "Witty, wily, and astonishingly sharp,
Convenience Store Woman proves that the deepest gouges can come
from the lightest touch."--Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious
Heresies"Convenience Store Woman is snarky and tender. It shows a
woman trying to puzzle out how to be normal. This brilliant book
will resonate with all of us who find life a little
strange."--Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You "I
think the riskiest kind of novel is the one that tries to rescue us
from mundane existence--by taking a closer look at mundane
existence . . . In this context, it is easy to say that
Murata-san's novel is a major breakthrough. Convenience Store Woman
is not an explosion of candor, but it manages to both be cool to
the touch and have depths of warmth in presenting to us a heroine
who feels at a remove from the world around her. This is a fine
high wire act to walk. One of the finest I have seen in a long time
from so young a writer."--John Freeman, Literary Hub "A hilarious
novel . . . Convenience Store Woman mocks the culture of work, the
employee's 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?"--Marie-France (France) "A portrait of the challenge of
being different in an ultra-policed society that ostracizes anyone
who deviates even slightly from the norm . . . a bittersweet
satire."--Livres-Hebro (France) "A love story pulled out of the
deep-freeze shelves of the heart . . . brilliant . . . not a word
too many, nor one too few . . . true love is the simple and
beautiful moral of this unusual yet uplifting story."--Die Zeit
(Germany) "This work merely describes the tiny world of a small
box--a convenience store . . . yet it packs all the appeal of a
[long] novel. In all my ten-plus years on the panel of judges, this
is the first time one of the shortlisted works has had me laughing.
And somehow that laugh was charged with a profound sense of irony.
Bravo Murata-san!"--Amy Yamada "I was really amazed by Convenience
Store Woman and the particular reality it exquisitely portrays . .
. [It] minutely translates the sadness, anguish, grief, grumbles,
fateful actions etc. of someone who is incapable of uttering the
right words, adding layers of details and spinning them into a
story . . . I am sincerely delighted that such a novel has come
into being."--Ryu Murakami "Choosing to give your novel a narrator
who is not normal, someone who is aware that there is something
strange about herself, is not an easy choice. Flaunting strangeness
as a privilege sometimes repels the reader. But Convenience Store
Woman skilfully evades this reaction. When the protagonist, a
social outcast, is placed within the box of the artificially
normalized convenience store, we begin to vividly see the
strangeness of the people in the world outside."--Yoko Ogawa
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