Sayaka Murata

It's not often that I read contemporary fiction. And it's even less often, I concede, that I read outside the American or European canon. But Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman was reviewed twice by the New York Times and piqued my interest.

So I read the book this week: in three sittings. It's a short novel, probably better described as a novella. But I'll admit, it packs a certain punch. This isn't a perfect book: there were times I felt a longer, more developed narrative might have added necessary layers to the book's emotional landscape. But as I say: there's lots to like here, even if Murata focuses, by and large, on a single thread.

Convenience Store Woman is about just that: a thirty-six year-old woman working at a convenience store in Tokyo. The difficulty is that she's worked there, without interruption, for sixteen years. In a sense, she is the store, describing it at times as she might herself: its breathing, its rhythms, its vitality.  

Working at any store, but particularly a convenience store, for so long comes with inevitable social judgement, and Murata writes convincingly of that dynamic: her central character -- Keiko Furukura -- is repeatedly reminded of the choice she must make: to marry, or to assume more meaningful work. She does neither, of course, and is cast as something "weird," as someone to be fixed. 

In sparse, accessible prose, Murata succeeds in asking a number of profound questions. Among them: what is the relationship between life and work, and to what extent does work dictate happiness? Because if not happy, Furukura is at least content. And who's to say there's anything wrong with that? 

Ultimately, I felt Convenience Store Woman might have continued further, or that its existing narrative might have been bolstered by way of more complexity (and a more detailed treatment of sexuality). But perhaps that's Murata's objective: to cast everything in a simple -- a deceptively simple -- light: to reveal small talk for what it is, and to present Murata for what she is: a worker content, despite society's attempts to belittle that achievement.