Convenience Store Woman

Fluorescent is the perfect word.

Sayaka Murata and her two thousand sixteen novel, Convenience Store Woman.

Enter Keiko Furukura.

She is thirty-six years old.

Let's get into it.

First, we have Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata clocking in at 192 pages.

Such a brilliant, unique book.

So the description tells us about a 36-year-old woman in Tokyo who spent her entire life never seeming to fit into conventional societal expectations.

To understand that, we really have to look at how these authors use their short page counts to isolate a single catalytic choice within very specific cultural contexts.

Okay, let's break that down.

Start with Convenience Store Woman.

Right.

Many of her female characters feel distant from their bodies, both in mechanics and in purpose.

In 2016, Murata published Convenience Store Woman, a novel narrated by a contentedly unambitious Smile Mart worker who achieves greater fulfillment performing her rote duties as an employee than aspiring to marriage or motherhood.

Convenience Store Woman was a national bestseller that year, winning Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and nearly every year since, and it has sold one point five million copies worldwide.

Earthlings, Murata's second novel to be translated into English, is about a woman whose alienation is literal.

She believes she's an extraterrestrial disguised as a human.

This simple, rule-bound world, in which every task was outlined in the company handbook, provided instructions she knew how to follow.

After five or six years, the store closed, but Murata continued working at five other konbinis over the next 18 years.

During this time, she wrote Convenience Store Woman, a story of feminist rebellion with her singular spin.

I think a lot of Japanese translated fiction fits perfectly into this.

Sayaka Murata is a pretty prolific author of freaky books and Convenience Store Woman and Life Ceremony are two that I've read by her that I think fit perfectly.

All the Lovers in the Night by Miyako Kawakami, Vladimir by Julia Mae Jones, The New Me by Halle Butler, Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder.

My Husband by Maud Ventura.

Like, if you're, like, trying to get into the genre, perfect all vibes, no plot, but, like, written in a way that is very accessible to everyone.

I think sometimes we go, like, the writing's, like, it's too weird.

People are like, like if I started with Sky Daddy, I'd be like, what? Convenience store woman, stunning, great read.

Similar to Sky Daddy in the way that like it kind of sounds like Yes Girl Give Us Nothing, but then you actually read it and there's these beautiful connections.