.SOMETIMES RAW.

‘Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.’

Sayaka Murata’s novel Convenience Store Woman is a darkly comic look at the life of a 36-year-old woman working in a convenience store and the many ways she is looked down upon by ‘normal society’. Having surpassed a socially acceptable age for the job and still being single, Keiko is relegated to the fringes of society despite being a model employee. As someone who is also on the autism spectrum, she often has difficulties navigating what is considered normal, wishing there was a manual to life she could study and master the way she has the store manual. In this slim novel, Murata humorously and effectively skewers society for the inherently ableist and often misogynist undercurrents in socially enforced hierarchies and questions perspectives of normality all while also crafting a touching ode to essential employees who are doing their best despite our lack of care and attention for them.

This book really hit me. Keiko instinctively knows exactly how to organize a display for optimal sales, chart your day around busy periods, picking up difficult hours when others leave. A simple and pretty thankless job and something where being good and reliable at it usually becomes a sort of self-punishment when you get tasked with the more difficult shifts and added responsibilities and the verbal thank you’s are never echoed in your paycheck. Each scene in the store breathed with life and felt true, an authenticity she was able to capture as Murata was working in a convenience store while writing the book. I could place myself in those back offices and feel deep in my heart the various employee reactions to corporate mottos and extreme instances of greeting each customer. While I’ve never shouted ‘Irasshaimase’, which becomes almost a mantra in the novel, the scenes around its use in the novel really rang true within me. So I felt it when Keiko comments:

‘When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that’s what a human is.’

This is a novel for the retail clerk, the essential workers, and anyone who has ever been made to feel less simply for working a job. Shoutout to you.

‘So the manual for life already existed. It was just that it was already ingrained in everyone’s heads, and there wasn’t any need to put it in writing.’

Keiko is a really empathetic character. When she turns 18, she gets a job at the convenience store where she still works 18 years later. The symmetry of 18 years is a nice metaphor for the dichotomy of Keiko as an employee and Keiko as a social being. Outside the store, she is an outsider, while inside she is the star employee. The store does, however, give her an opportunity to observe how the “normal” people act and dress, with Keiko often adopting the mannerisms and clothing styles of coworkers she enjoys best. ‘After all, I absorb the world around me,’ she thinks, ‘and that’s changing all the time.’ As employees come and go, so too does Keiko’s mannerisms, which she is embarrassed by when it is pointed out to her.

The store starts to appear as a microcosm of the world for her. When new employee, Shiraha, shrugs off work, refuses to listen to his female coworkers and complains constantly (we all know this guy), Keiko asks him ‘Um, you do realize you’ll be fixed?’ Keiko sees employees all as cells in the body of the store, and the defective or sickly ones are discarded and replaced. Such is the way of a store. She accepts that her pay is solely to keep her alive enough to keep working and is constantly aware of her need to stay healthy ‘for the store.’ While this subtly points to how jobs don’t provide a living wage and keep employees trapped in the lower classes, it also makes her realize that she too will eventually be replaced.

When you do physical labor, you end up being no longer useful when your physical condition deteriorates. However hard I work, however dependable I am, when my body grows old then no doubt I too will be a worn-out part, ready to be replaced, no longer of any use to the convenience store.

The extreme ableism in a work culture such as this is perpetuating a class of ‘undesirables’ and outsiders. Keiko notes that this is how social life is too, and while she may still be a star employee, in her social life she is constantly exposed as ‘not normal’ and criticized openly for it. Keiko has no interest in sexual relations–shoutout to anyone who is ace, you are valid and I support you–yet constantly told ‘deep down you must be getting desperate.’ To be an outsider, Keiko finds, is also to be bombarded with opinions on how you should live your life and to be always making excuses for yourself instead of able to just embrace your own being. ‘The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects,’ she thinks, despairing, ‘anyone who is lacking is disposed of.’ This is, understandably, a difficult impasse of an existential crisis, particularly for one who wants to just be themself and work their job with pride.

‘The specific form of what is considered an “ordinary person” had been there all along, unchanged since prehistoric times I finally realized.’ 

This perspective is only amplified when Keiko converses with Shiraha who spends all his time ranting about how society discards the outsiders. Shiraha is obsessed with his theory of tribalism and that humans haven’t changed ‘since the Stone Age’ of discarding the weak and outsiders. While he isn’t exactly wrong about society being oppressive, Keiko concedes, he himself is part of the problem (one of my favorite scenes in The Big Lebowski is Jeff Bridges saying ‘You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole”) as he reinforces misogyny and he doesn’t want to dismantle the oppressive structures but instead climb them to be an oppressor. Shiraha is essentially an Incel with his combination of sexual predator nature combined with a massive victim complex and is fired after harassing woman employees and then stalking a woman customer.

Despite Shiraha’s completely repulsive behavior and personality, Keiko sees how he may be useful. She can keep him ‘hidden from society’ in her apartment because having a man live there will raise her ‘normalcy’ in other’s eyes. ‘It appears that if a man and a woman are alone in an apartment together, people’s imaginations run wild and they’re satisfied regardless of the reality,’ she says.

‘She’s far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine.’

Here we see how social norms are a frail playacting. ‘I was beginning to lose track of what “society” actually was,’ she thinks, ‘ I even had the feeling it was all an illusion.’ What is sad is how once she has penetrated the illusion, her perceptions of everyone around her crumble as does her world. The people she respects at work are revealed as gossips more interested in social interaction than doing a job, which is devastating to her, and her plans go inevitably awry. However, I found the conclusion of the novel to be hopeful and empowering, especially as it validates essential workers as being something to be proud of.

All in all, Sayaka Murata has crafted a brilliant little gem that quickly cuts to the heart of society and exposes normality and social hierarchy as a mere facade for oppression. This is one for the outsiders, the “losers” (as Shiraha is quick to call people), those making ends meet while rightfully believing they are still dignified. It is deeply and darkly comical but is written with such an earnest and light touch that it reverberates in your soul like the sun breaking through the clouds as you step out of work.

Poignant, hopeful and empowering, Convenience Store Woman is a winner.

I hate going to the dentist. Hate it! With a passion! And I am always scared and avoid appointments like the plague. There were times when I was in so much pain but I still didn’t go. Every thought of going to a dentist’s office creates immense stress and discomfort in me. This is due to many traumatizing dentist visits in my childhood. I am not exaggerating. Did I mention that I hate dentists? Will this ever get better? Maybe if my dentist would send me an email like these listed below I would agree to schedule an appointment to overcome my trauma. Maybe.

Possible emails:

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Jennifer at reception started having an affair with one of the dentists, and her husband will be storming into the office to confront them about it during your appointment.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Our new latex gloves are chocolate-flavored.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! We are going to start publicly posting on our website when all of our patients’ last appointments were, so you can’t lie when your mom asks. 

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! The TV in our waiting room is playing Notting Hill and Die Hard 1.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but did you know that Dwayne Johnson is one of our patients, too? Who knows, maybe you might bump into him here.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Your teeth look disgusting when you wear a white shirt. Everybody thinks so.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! We promise we won’t annoy you about getting your wisdom teeth removed this time. And won’t even ask you how often you floss. That’s none of our business.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! We’ll let you take a silly one on the X-ray and ask as many silly questions as you want (and even more than you usually do).

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! One time, somebody put off their cleaning for an extra month, and all of their teeth fell out, and they died. I’m sure that won’t happen to you though… but you never know.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! There’s a bouncing castle in the parking lot now.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! There is caramel toffee and champagne in the waiting room.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Honestly, forget about posting it to our website. How about we call your mom directly and tell her when you last came in? We have her phone number since she’s your emergency contact. Guess that means you’re probably single, huh? Maybe you wouldn’t be if you had a better smile… just saying.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! We taught the fish in the lobby’s aquarium how to do a loop-the-loop—you gotta come check this out.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Help! We’re trapped under something heavy and need you to come free us. We’re only able to reach our keyboard to send this one email, and the battery is about to die, so you’re our only hope.

YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! In the mood to have a neck and foot massage in the waiting room? Come on down!

“She had repeated this trip every August 16 at the same time, with the same taxi and the same florist, under the fiery sun of that destitute cemetery, to place a bouquet of fresh gladioli on her mother’s grave.”

Until August (Wir sehen uns im August) by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Anne McLean) revolves around forty-six-year-old Ana Magdalena Bach and her annual visits (on the 16th of August) to the island where her mother is buried. Ana’s itinerary includes a visit to the cemetery where she places a bouquet of her mother’s favorite flowers and indulges in a one-night stand with a different man every year before she returns to her family – her musician husband of over two decades and her two adult children. One of her trysts ends in a humiliating gesture and she carries both the emotional and physical reminder of the same through the years. Every visit to the island and her experiences with the men she meets inspires her to reflect on her actions, her marriage and her family. In sparse prose we are given insight into her motivations, her internal conflict and her desire in a journey of self- explorations with a thought-provoking ending.

A departure (in terms of theme and approach) from the nature of Gabriel García Márquez’s more famous works, this is not the author at his best but for those of us who have enjoyed the author’s work in the past, it won’t be difficult to appreciate the segments that shine with the author’s brilliant writing. But sadly, that is all we can expect from this short novella. I have no doubt had this manuscript been developed into a full-length novel with well-fleshed-out characters, and their motivations and relationships explored deeper; this would have been a worthy addition to the author’s oeuvre.

Please read the Preface to the novel where the author’s sons discuss their decision to publish this novella posthumously despite his wishes to discard the draft manuscript. A segment of this novella (translated by Edith Grossman) was previously published (1999) in the form of a short story. 

Releasing a posthumous work by a beloved author will always be a fraught exercise, even more so when the author in question is widely considered one of the 20th century’s best. Pre-publication hype is countervailed with confected outrage about ‘betraying’ the author’s wishes.

Gabriel García Márquez did not think Until August ready to be published, but it is by no means ‘rough’ or incomplete. Per the explanatory notes, this was the fifth draft. It may not have been perfectly polished to the author’s highest standard, and there is a suggestion that it was intended as a part of a larger whole — a cycle of novellas — yet it works just fine as a standalone story and is not some kind of inferior work.

That said, if you have not read García Márquez before, don’t start here. Until August is not characteristic of his famous style, containing no magical realism (although you could argue the book’s ending contains just the slightest hint) or baroque prose flourishes. The style is spare and pared back, the story simple and repetitive in the manner of a piece of music. The overall effect is of old-fashioned charm and elegance mingled with tawdriness, like evening wear scented with sweat and booze. It is a very short work (despite claims of ‘novel’ on the cover), barely cracking 100 pages, and that is with large type and wide margins.

I can remember reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and a switch flipping in my brain: books can be this? It felt like graduating to an entirely different level of reading experience. Until August is not likely to have that effect on anyone (what an incredibly high bar!) It feels like what it is: a minor work of a master.