Japanese fiction can, at times, be difficult for me to decipher. I’ll admit that there seems to be something, ineffable, in the aesthetic that leaves me a bit mystified. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, however, left me feeling very connected to a world I have little familiarity with. The detachment of the main character, Keiko, at first felt reminiscent of the sort of surrealism of Murakami, but as she encounters the familiar obstacles of family and peer pressure, Keiko came to feel very grounded.
Convenience Store Woman is, I think, a sort of “coming of age” story, one in which the main character must come to terms with her own self and where she feels comfortable fitting into her world. Some may think that sort of story is inappropriate in a mid-thirty year old character, but in fact the mid-thirties seems to be a time when many people are yet again reevaluating who they are, what they want and need out of life, and how to get it. In this case, Keiko does have a ring of someone perhaps on the Autism spectrum, but that seems only to enhance the story and the empathetic connection with the character. Wildly successful in Japan and becoming more so in the US, Convenience Store Woman is unexpectedly a story that everyone can probably identify with in some way.