Convenience Store Woman
Reviews
we love you keiko
FUN AND WITTY
oh fuvk the society's norms
In this book, our female lead reaches a point where she grows weary of being the "foreign object." In her attempt to escape the perceived abnormality, Keiko Furukura finds herself losing her authentic self and experiencing firsthand the consequences of trying to fit into society's mold of "normalcy." How devastatingly her surroundings prefer normalcy, blinding to a messed up version of the normalcy itself (refering to "For her, normality—however messy—is far more comprehensible.")
And does being married, having children, and not working at a convenience store make you normal?
(PS. The male characters pissed me off)
convinience strore woman is not just a simple story, but a story on exploration of identity and societal expectations, told through the lens of a complex character entrenched in monotony all her life. the protagonist keiko furukura, grapple with the universal desire to belong, often feeling compelled to shrink herself into a form that society deems digestible. furukura's character emits "i am a convenience store worker or nothing" throughout her entire body, and it reflects the tragedy of tying one's worth to a role that the world perceives as insignificant, simply because one's individuality falls outside the bounds of what is considered to be "normal." this is heartbreaking yet thought-provoking at the same time because how much of ourselves must we compromise to conform to societal expectations? what does it even mean to be "normal"?
in a way, i envy furukura. despite the triviality of her chosen path, she has something she genuinely loves and fully commits to—something many people spend their entire lives searching for.
convenience store woman allows us to reflect on how we define worth, purpose, and normalcy in our lives.
(ps. i almost did not finish this book bc it felt like a chore to push through some of the repetitive chapters in the first half. but my curiosity to understand furukura’s character kept me going, and i'm glad i did.)
Very thought-provoking
holy shit. i was not expecting this to be as good as it was but this was such an unsettling yet direct and profound depiction of how women literally cannot fucking escape the burden of heteropatriarchy... will be thinking about this one for a while
the girls that get it get it…got me kinda sad though
Quite bizarre and weirdly riveting, without insisting on a particular thesis. Rather than feeling like a literary puzzle I need to rearrange properly, this feels like someone’s recount of a series of events - leaving me to conclude whatever I felt like.
Overall it is a critique of man’s innate desire for order in society, for preferring that a person be normal with problems than abnormal and perfectly fine. Rather than reject society for this and shun it, it is better to accept and live with this reality. Shura haram is as much an outcast and an abnormality as Furukura is - but his constant resistance to his own nature is his sin.
The convenience store shifts in Furukuras mind. At first a place where she could be normal and find a set of rules that befit societal standards, allowing her to wear a mask and become human, she shifts to understand it as a creature and a place with its own rules, a place where she belonged. The convenience store is no longer a means to an end - it is the end in and of itself, absorbing her.
I enjoyed exploring the experiences of Keiko, the main character, who seems to embody neurodivergent traits as she faces societal criticism for not meeting conventional expectations. She finds comfort in her routine at the convenience store, despite pressure from others to marry and have children like “normal” people. In contrast, Shiraha, while not entirely wrong in his anger toward societal norms, adopts a bitter and toxic perspective, which I found frustrating and misogynistic.
Overall, it was an engaging, easy read, though it felt repetitive at times.
not a lot would get it but i do
modern take on kafka’s the metamorphosis
erm
A story of an alien who tries to understand all intricacies of human society. Light, relatable, concise, it doesn't give you any answers on how to live but rather allows you to explore the definitions and applications of modern world rules and customs, allows you to question them along with Keiko who just wants to always be surrounded by the certainty and stability of a convenience store.
I like Korean and Japanese modern prose for simplicity and minimalism of thought and story telling, but as I finish such books I'm always left with this feeling of incompleteness as if the author forgot to write the last chapter or there was a certain limit to the size of the book. Still looking forward to finding more interesting Japanese literature to stop coming back to Murakami all the time.
Everyone deserves to be recognized and understood. Keiko was a refreshing narrator. Being content is not equal to being unhappy
"love for the young-girl is just autism for two"
3.5/5. It it was longer, I think I would hate it very much because of Shiraha. Ugh, that guy.
"The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of." A peculiar story. I've never heard of anything like it. The premise is simple and the language is easy to read, so it was easy to flip through. Keiko is a funny protagonist with a strange devotion to her beloved convenience store.
conformity is one hell of a drug :/
Something about this book is just strangely charming. I love the main character and her way of thinking, and her experiences - being alienated because society doesn’t deem you useful simply because you’re not following the ‘normal’ way of life - is something I’ve always been scared of. When I read the ending though, I realized that it doesn’t matter what society thinks. If your passion lies somewhere else entirely then that’s none of their business. If you find your place in something society deems too different or useless or unfulfilling then the only thing that matters is that you yourself feel like it’s where you belong. The story is written so well, very relaxed and genuinely sweet. I really liked it.
3,5 if you ever find yourself not being sure whether you're on the spectrum AND if you feel extremely depressed about the way society pushes you to have a good and interesting job and a husband because if you don't you're basically a loser, read this.
waste of my time
Nice to read the first of “what it means to be a normal in Japanese society”. I loved her she cranked to 11 in Earthlings.
I really liked this book. It's short and an easy read, but also gets across several messages about society and being a functioning "cog" of society that we often don't stop to think about because it's ingrained in our everyday nature. The way everyone has a specific set of expectations about their role in society, and if they are not able to live up to them, they are isolated and cast away. As odd (and kind of scary) as Keiko is, I appreciated the bluntness and unfazed behavior of her character and her ability to not bat an eye at society's expectations. This book teaches you that it's okay to fit in wherever you fit in, regardless of where it is on a social ladder.
Highlights
"No. It's not a matter of whether they permit it or not. It's what I am. For the human me, it probably is convenient to have you around, Shiraha, to keep my family and friends off my back. But the animal me, the convenience store worker, has absolutely no use for you whatsoever."
The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.
So that's why I need to be cured. Unless I'm cured, normal people will expurgate me.
Finally I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me.
Men go hunting and women keep the home and gather fruit and wild herbs while they wait for the men to come back. This type of work is more suited to the way women's brains are set up."
"Shiraha, we're in the twenty-first century! Here in the convenience store we're not men and women.
We're all store workers.
I'd never experienced sex, and I'd never even had any particular awareness of my own sexuality. I was indifferent to the whole thing and had never really given it any thought. And here was everyone taking it for granted that I must be miserable when I wasn't. Even if I had been, though, it didn't follow that my anguish would be the obvious type of anguish they were all talking about. But they didn't want to think it through that far. I had the feeling I was being told they wanted to settle the matter this way because that was the easiest option for them.
It was fun to see all kinds of people-from university students and guys who played in bands to job-hoppers, housewives, and kids studying for their high school diploma at night school-don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.
My parents were at a loss what to do about me, but they were as affectionate to me as ever. I'd never meant to make them sad or have to keep apologizing for things I did, so I decided to keep my mouth shut as best I could outside home. I would no longer do anything of my own accord, and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions.
Everyone was crying for the poor dead bird as they went around murdering flowers, plucking their stalks, exclaiming, "What lovely flowers! Little Mr. Budgie will definitely be pleased." They looked so bizarre I thought they must all be out of their minds.
"Poor little bird. It's so sad, isn't it Keiko?" my mother kept murmuring, as if trying to convince me.
But I didn't think it was sad at all.
Pelan-pelan kumasukkan telur ke kantong plastik. Benda yang sama seperti yang kujual kemarin, tapi telur yang berbeda. Pelanggan juga memasukkan sumpit yang sama ke kantong plastik yang sama seperti kemarin, mengambil kembalian vang sama dan memberikan senyum pagi yang sama.
aku suka bagaimana keiko mengalami hari-hari secara apa adanya. namun ia juga menyadari bahwa setiap hari memiliki denyut yang berbeda.
test
The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.
I'd noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy. If I went along with the manager when he was annoyed or joined in the general irritation at someone skiving off the night shift, there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too.
Now, too, I felt reassured by the expression on Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara's faces: Good, I pulled off being a "person".
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.
It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. I am one of those cogs, going round and round. I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.
In other words, you play the part of the fictitious creature called 'an ordinary person' that everyone has in them.
Cybermoon
I was taking on the form of a person that their brains all imagined as normal. Being congratulated by them felt strange, but I merely said, "Thank you."
“[…]. Society has reached the stage in which not being of any use to the village means being condemned just for existing.”
She was getting carried away with making up a story for herself. She might just as well have been saying I was "cured." If it had been that simple all along, I thought, I wish she'd given me clear instructions before, then I wouldn't have had to go to such lengths to find out how to be normal.
“then I wouldn't have had to go to such lengths to find out how to be normal.”
Seeing how excited she was, it occurred to me that it wasn't such a stretch to say that contemporary society was still stuck in the Stone Age after all. So the manual for life already existed. It was just that it was already ingrained in everyone's heads, and there wasn't any need to put it in writing. The specific form of what is considered an "ordinary person" had been there all along, unchanged since prehistoric times I finally realized.
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.
"If you ask me, this is a dysfunctional society. And since it's defective, I'm treated unfairly."
I thought he was probably right about that, and I couldn't even imagine what a perfectly functioning society would be like. I was beginning to lose track of what "society' actually was. I even had a feeling it was all an illusion.