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A review by absolutereality
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
3.0
This book felt incredibly bleak, although I’m not sure if that was the author’s intent or not. I think we are supposed to see Keiko’s realization that she functions best as a convenience store worker as a happy development. I don’t. I see it as an indictment of the society she lives in that she is unable to navigate unwritten social conventions and ostracized for it, so she is pushed to the point where she doesn’t even see the point in sleeping or eating if she’s not doing it in service to a corporation.
I also wish Shiraha had been more fleshed out as a character. I was rolling my eyes at his third lecture about the Stone Age. I know incels are hung up on that, but they do have more than one talking point, even if those talking points are bullshit.
Still, this is an incredibly fresh, straight-forward style of writing that I really appreciated. I liked getting inside the mind of someone very different from me, and I found Keiko’s insights interesting if a little off the mark.
I also wish Shiraha had been more fleshed out as a character. I was rolling my eyes at his third lecture about the Stone Age. I know incels are hung up on that, but they do have more than one talking point, even if those talking points are bullshit.
Still, this is an incredibly fresh, straight-forward style of writing that I really appreciated. I liked getting inside the mind of someone very different from me, and I found Keiko’s insights interesting if a little off the mark.