Praise the retail god

 

Lovely English edition.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.

I wrote an opinion some time ago and forgot, however I must confess that my murky memory has clouded a lot of detail. That being said, when reading it I felt like a huge jerk. Just recently I lost someone important through a chain of misunderstandings, but right in the middle of it, I felt judged by some standard that I wasn’t able to comply. Bear with me, what makes it relevant... maybe, was that I feel now that I judged Keiko´s character the same way, like if the store was removed, she would lose her purpose in life and be an empty shell. Is that really so? By what standard we judge purpose or measure character? Was I judging her because she has another way of expressing and handling the same core we all have? Oh, man… the mind trip. What a wondrous book full of surprises. Here is what I wrote with some modifications with these ideas in mind.

A very challenging little beast. It touches so many important questions in a particular way. Identity, social and familiar expectations, gender, purpose, social standing, normalcy and what lengths do you go for fitting in. Many could be thrown off or on the contrary attracted to the main character Keiko and her struggles to fit in, being different to everyone else, but it is a brilliant canvas for the machinery of individuality and life among people. For me, Keiko is a big irony of the stupid and eternal contradiction on normalcy that society demands: be yourself… just not like that. Big extra points for that.

I still think about this book now and then, it makes uncomfortable statements and there is a bit of a loop of ideas that just play in the background for a while: Keiko is the perfect employee, the store gives her meaning and makes her a “normal” person, but society is not satisfied with it, leaving Keiko in an unending battle to comply and it really is a conundrum as she knows herself so different, but the meaning and dynamic of her existence is just the same in the end, we all have elaborate rituals, reasons and ways to comply. Maybe from another perspective we dress up things in a certain way and it makes sense, are we so different? There is much more lost on the surface in the long run and we all are so eager to make sense. It is not as much as how we are different, but how we never let ourselves forget it.

I am afraid I have more questions now, so I plan to revisit later and who knows what will happen.

And it is weird to rate, because it makes you think so much, but at the same time it has its flaws. It is a very short book, but became repetitive rather quickly, and… it fits. Beyond its apparent flaws it is a quick, fun (with a touch of dark) and quirky read that worms itself inside your mind for a while, totally recommended.