"Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata

The first words out of my mouth as I closed this book and laid it down were, "That was weird."

Convenience Store Woman tells the story of Keiko Furukura, who is 36 years old and has worked part-time in the same Tokyo convenience store for half her life. Her friends and family can't understand why she has never married or had children--has never even had a romantic relationship--or why she hasn't made an attempt to have an actual career. She hides behind little white lies to make others feel better (she vaguely mentions that she has a medical condition that makes her frail, so she is unable to handle more serious employment), but the truth is that her very existence revolves around the convenience store. It's the only thing in her life that she finds meaningful. She doesn't understand the way the minds and lives of most people work, and no one would understand if they knew what really goes on in Keiko's mind and life. She closely observes others and mimics their words and mannerisms so she can pass as one of them, but this only serves to mask the true extent of her other-ness.

I don't really know whether to take this book at face value or whether to look for hidden meaning. At face value, Keiko is probably autistic and no one around her understands or accepts this. Everyone in her life wants her to be more like them so that she can be happy and fulfilled; they don't understand that when she is at work in the convenience store she is happy and fulfilled. The ending is at once happy and sad . . . Keiko is happy, but in a way that seems sadly limited to anyone else. But maybe the story is actually saying something more? It definitely gets into some deeper ideas, voiced by Shiraha but understood and shared by Keiko, about the expectations of society.

I enjoyed reading this book (despite the overabundance of annoying cliches in its dialogue) but I'm ultimately uncertain about what I think of it. As I neared the end, my husband asked me if the book was funny. I thought about that for several long moments before I could answer. I slowly said, "It's quirky . . . I guess it's funny in a weird way . . . or maybe it's just weird?"