Convenience Store Woman
By: Sayaka Murata / Translated By: Ginny Tapley Takemori / Narrated By: Nancy Wu
Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
Didn’t feel it so much through the first listen, but really picked up on the humor and depth during the second listen
I know: It took me back to back listens before I was able to make heads/tails outta Convenience Store Woman, and I think that says more about my sloppy listening habits than it does about the audiobook/story’s construction.
It’s like this, see. I just found the turning point decision by heroine Keiko to be based toooo much on the words of an egregiously odious character. I mean, why listen to THAT jerk?
But lemme back up and just say the story is about Keiko, who starts by telling us that she’s always been a little off; she doesn’t understand it, but apparently when she does and says things that come from her mind and soul? Well, people around her freak out. Saaaaaay, being a little girl at a park, finding a group of children weeping around a little dead bird, shoving the children outta the way to grab the bird, then dashing back to Mom with victorious cries of: Let’s EAT it!!!!
This causes much consternation to dear Mom who writhes with confusion and embarrassment under the penetrating stares of the other mothers at the park.
Dunno, Keiko thinks: Makes perfect sense to her. But through this and many other… “off”…. actions throughout her growing up years, she’s decided she doesn’t wish to make anybody upset, so she shuts up and goes by what everybody around her does, mimicking their expressions, going off facial movements. When she applies for, and gets a job as, a convenience store clerk, it’s AWEsome cuz not only is behavior, and stock, regimented, there’s actually a Convenience Store Manual that tells every good and faithful clerk just how to be.
So she stays there until we get to her now, when she’s in her mid-30s, never been in love (And didn’t THAT shock the heck outta everyone when she sorta blurted it?!), and tho’ she did indeed try some career track moves earlier, she’s totally happy being a convenience store woman where she watches time march on, and she watches coworkers (Whom she mimics) and managers come and go. Things get turned upside down, however, when the skinniest, gnarliest, most vocally disgruntled dude is hired. He can’t do anything right, doesn’t even want to, and he constantly tells Keiko how at her age, she’s basically cast herself from the village since she’s not doing the conventional: She’s just a 36-year old unmarried virgin in a dead end job.
This has Keiko wondering if maybe she should be doing something else, and she sets the dude up in her tiny apartment where he lives in her bathtub and basically only grunts at her to get his meals. Of course, he’s always long-winded on what a loser she is, but that together, he can remain unemployed and fly under the radar, and she can enjoy her sudden new status as woman with a boyfriend, possibly a free-loader, yes, but a BOYFRIEND!!! living with her.
The problem I initially had with the story was because of how readily Keiko takes in this verbally abusive jerk and fashions his words up as her new Manual to Life. Though the writing doesn’t say it, we’re led to believe she’s a trifle on the spectrum, has her rituals for comfort (Namely of being part of the heart and rhythm of the Smile Mart), and that had me thinking she was a bit more logical than what her choices bore out. That dude, I tell ya! He had a couple of good points about societal expectations, but what a wretch!
But the second time I listened to it, I heard a very different Keiko, one who was keenly observing cues, was shrewdly compiling data. And I wound up hearing a detached woman who had a lot of heart. The ending is a definitely sweet one, and at well under 4-hours, seriously, you can afford to listen to it twice.
Also initially, I thought Nancy Wu’s narration was particularly shrill and childlike. But she grew on me, especially as Keiko came to grow on me as well. Wu winds up delivering wheedlers, whiners, connivers, and the plain peeved-off in addition to relaying a likable Keiko. So ultimately, yay to Wu!
Maybe not my favorite all time audiobook, but I am truly glad I didn’t write the review after the first listen. The story, and Keiko, deserve the generosity of spirit!
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