Convenience Store Woman

Reviews

“Narrator Nancy Wu gives Keiko a doll-like voice, a funny mix of mechanical and childishness that aptly captures the character’s otherness.”

“Quirky Keiko Furukura comes to awkward life in Nancy Wu’s hilarious narration…an energetic delivery that keeps listeners engaged from the first chapter…Wu has us laughing out loud, especially at Keiko’s unexpected forays into love. This is a rollicking story…paired with a narrator who can maximize the characters’ discomfort for our humor.”

“A weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book.”

"Brilliant, witty, and sweet…[Keiko’s] story of conforming for convenience (literally) is one that women all over the world know all too well.”

“Written in plain-spoken prose, the slim volume focuses on a character who in many ways personifies a demographic panic in Japan.”

“[Keiko] is an anti-Bartleby, abandoning any shred of identity outside of her work…The book itself is tranquil—dreamy, even—rooting for its employee-store romance from the bottom of its synthetic heart.”

“Getting to hear the Irasshaimase! greetings sprinkled throughout…with their proper Japanese inflection is one key to this audiobook’s excellence. But Nancy Wu’s bright, emotionally detached reading of protagonist Miss Furukura is what transforms the book into a harrowing look inside a potential sociopath’s mind.”

“[In this] small, elegant, and deadpan novel from Japan, a woman senses that society finds her strange, so she culls herself from the herd before anyone else can do it…[An] offbeat exploration of what we must each leave behind to participate in the world.”

“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.”

“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?”

“A love story pulled out of the deep-freeze shelves of the heart…True love is the simple and beautiful moral of this unusual yet uplifting story.”

“A spare, quietly brilliant novel…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.”

“Magical…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.”

“Murata’s brilliant Convenience Store Woman…has been seen as a Gothic romance between a ‘misfit and a store’ and as…an artful grotesque of modern personal branding.”

“A hilariously deadpan, absurdist send-up of rigorous social norms in aging, postwar Japan…Keiko’s fidelity to her role as a cog in the machine is put to the test and the result is as quietly unsettling as any one of Kafka’s short stories.”

“Stunning…This is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a ‘functioning adult’ in today’s world.”

“A dazzling English-language debut in a crisp translation by Takemori, rich in scathingly entertaining observations on identity, perspective, and the suffocating hypocrisy of ‘normal’ society.”

“While Murata’s novel focuses on life in Japanese culture, her storytelling will resonate with all people and experiences.”

“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.”

“Quirky, deadpan, poignant, and quietly profound, it is a gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the world.”

“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.”

“I was really amazed by Convenience Store Woman and the particular reality it exquisitely portrays.”

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