Intent on lessening the burgeoning pile of bought-but-never-read books mounting in my room, and, not gonna lie, hellbent on having an excuse to stop studying today (haha), I started reading Convenience Store Woman. I ended up finishing the book in an hour. Granted, it was a short read – a hundred and sixty-three pages of what looks like size-14 prose, but I think the book still deserves much of the credit.

Murata’s writing is blunt and effective – it reads easily and tells the story like it is. But I think it’s this straightforward tell-it-like-it-is writing that gives Convenience Store Woman its charm. It centers around gargantuan topics like sociological structure, classism, and patriarchy, but houses these concepts in a vessel so plain sailing. Told through the perspective of an “ill-adjusted”, thirty-six-year-old, convenience store part-timer, Convenience Store Woman delves into the expectations set in (or by) contemporary society and the intrinsic validity of such expectations, and sheds light on the ostracization of those who fail to live up to such expectations. It subverts the usual narrative of Hero is presented with a challenge, then Hero overcomes the challenge, but just narrates the void of an existence the hero is purported to have. Admittedly, this is also where its common criticism springs from. Convenience Store Woman does not necessarily have a strong plot. Initially, I took this as a negative, but upon further thought – do all books need a strong plot? Do they always have to abide by the classic story structure of intro-rising action-climax-falling action-denouement? Convenience Store Woman, I think, just wanted to be a retelling of the society we live in – a book for introspection and further thought. And it does this well.

A final note. At the risk of pre-empting the story, I love how it makes you think – who were the real “convenience store people”? Keiko, the outcast who fails to live up to the script society has set for her on how to live her life, but was at least aware that such a script exists and such standards are nothing more but scripts, or the “well-adjusted” people who were fond of criticizing the Keikos of Japan and all came in the same packaging society has molded them to come with?

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Was it earth-shatteringly good? No. Is it worth the read? Yes.

Rating: 3.75 / 5