Convenience Store Woman: A Novel by Sayaka Murata

I get there at 6:30-6:45p to hold down a table. Low of 50F (10C) so dress warm tonight.

Discussion Questions:

1. How did you like the book?
2. Keiko picks up characteristics from those around her very directly. Have you ever picked up behaviours from those around you? Did you know you were doing it?
3. There’s a lot discussion in the novel about societal structures and expectations, to what extent do you feel these are real or perceived by the characters? Have you personally ever felt at odds with society.
4. What do you think of Keiko’s relationship with Shiraha? Who’s using whom?
5. Convenience Store Woman might takes the idea of being defined by your work to an extreme, have you ever felt defined by your job? How?

Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…