Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Convenience Store Woman

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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This is a very Japanese book, and I enjoyed it all the more since I spent a good part of June feeding my children onigiri from Japanese convenience stores. Ever since she was a child, our protagonist Keiko Furakura has had trouble with social cues. Her part-time job at a convenience store gives her days a structure, and has for the past 18 years. She lives and breathes the convenience store, although she recognizes on some level that she is but a cog, she likes […]

I have become a functioning part of the world.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual. ― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman Keiko is stuck in a dead-end job. She works at a Smile Mart (a chain convenience store) in Japan. She has worked there since it opened eighteen years ago. She is an exemplary worker, showing up on her scheduled work days, always early. She […]

Nothing ever changes at the convenience store.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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There is almost a sinister undertone to this brief, interesting novel. Keiko is a young woman working at the Hiiromachi branch of the Smile Mart, a convenience store – which sounds much cleaner, brighter, and customer-focused than any convenience store I’ve visited in the US. She sees herself as essentially reborn from the moment she takes this job. Early in the novel you know that Keiko is a little different – her flat affect in the narration and veneration of rules makes it immediately clear […]

Like A Wes Anderson Psychological Thriller in Japan

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

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I eagerly picked up Earthlings when I heard it was released. I loved Sayaka Murata’s English language debut, Convenience Store Woman, and was excited to see what the latest translation of her work had to offer. She has a unique and compelling style of prose, and a way of explaining the pressures of Japanese society that is sympathetic to her weird outsiders and totally rational in a slightly twisted way. The cover and back of Earthlings is full of praise for Convenience Store Woman, raving […]

Earthlings (2018) – Sayaka Murata

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

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CW: Child abuse/sex abuse A devastating follow up (not a sequel, just the same writer) to Convenience Store Woman, which I also reread and enjoyed more the second time. This story begins with the close narration of a young girl who believes she is a kind of outsider to the world, has a crush on her cousin, and finds weirdness and joy in different parts of her life. She is sexually abused by her teacher (and narrated in such sadness) and this causes her to […]

When a cog is broken, you throw it away.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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Keiko Furukura has been different her entire life, and she’s always to understand why she makes people uncomfortable. As a child, she found a dead bird and she brought it to her mother, who responded with sympathy and an offer to bury it. Keiko instead wanted to eat it. One day at school, two boys were fighting. Horrified, one of the girls screamed for someone to break them up, so Keiko grabbed a shovel and hit one of them over the head. And that was […]



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