As someone who is also on the autism spectrum, she often has difficulties navigating what is considered normal, wishing there was a manual to life she could study and master the way she has the store manual. Having surpassed a socially acceptable age for the job and to still be single, Keiko is relegated to the fringes of society despite being a model employee. Sayaka Murata’s hit novel from recent years, Convenience Store Woman is a darkly comic look at the life of-you guessed it-a 36 year old woman working in a convenience store and the many ways she is looked down upon by ‘normal society’. Yet, for all the praise justly bestowed upon them, these are often jobs that are disregarded, looked down upon and don’t provide much of a wage.
As the world shut down, the essential worker stocked shelves, collected trash, took temperatures and kept society going.
In 2020 the “essential worker” became a hot topic of conversation. ‘ Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.’
Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…Ī brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction ― many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual ― and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.
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