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A review by avalinahsbooks
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
5.0
How I read this: borrowed through Scribd free trial
This is brilliant, but I don't understand why people think this story is funny (that's said even on the back cover). I nearly cried.
Maybe they think it's funny because it's not about them. This is about being non-neurotypical, aromantic and asexual, and the peer pressure and unacceptance that comes with this. People like that will just not be allowed to be themselves, and the book is a critique of that. I can't wrap my mind around how this could have seemed funny to anyone. Even the way the character talks and finds everything about society and human behavior was just a clearly autistic way of viewing life, but I guess to an allistic person it sounds like the character was.. joking? A caricature? Well, it's not. And it wasn't funny.
To me, it was kind of tragic, this story. It made me want to cry, because it's so true. If you're just a little bit different, they WILL chew you out. They won't let you be yourself without trying to "fix you". They'll be more content to see you if you're "having normal problems" than seeing you happy in a different way than how everyone else is used to understanding happiness. Because being happy in a non-conforming way is just not acceptable, alien and somehow dangerous to society. To someone who has never experienced anything like this, it may look like an allegory. To me it was all just too realistic.
But it is a brilliant book. You should definitely read it.
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This is brilliant, but I don't understand why people think this story is funny (that's said even on the back cover). I nearly cried.
Maybe they think it's funny because it's not about them. This is about being non-neurotypical, aromantic and asexual, and the peer pressure and unacceptance that comes with this. People like that will just not be allowed to be themselves, and the book is a critique of that. I can't wrap my mind around how this could have seemed funny to anyone. Even the way the character talks and finds everything about society and human behavior was just a clearly autistic way of viewing life, but I guess to an allistic person it sounds like the character was.. joking? A caricature? Well, it's not. And it wasn't funny.
To me, it was kind of tragic, this story. It made me want to cry, because it's so true. If you're just a little bit different, they WILL chew you out. They won't let you be yourself without trying to "fix you". They'll be more content to see you if you're "having normal problems" than seeing you happy in a different way than how everyone else is used to understanding happiness. Because being happy in a non-conforming way is just not acceptable, alien and somehow dangerous to society. To someone who has never experienced anything like this, it may look like an allegory. To me it was all just too realistic.
But it is a brilliant book. You should definitely read it.
Book Blog | Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter