💖 MY BOOK REVIEW 💖

" Convenience Store woman "
By Sayaka Murata

When the novel came out in 2018,it was an immediate hit,selling over 650 000 copies and winning the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Contemporary Japanese literature remains in the shadow in the English-speaking world despite the fact that Japanese writers such as Haruki Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro have already gained popularity worldwide. Russia is not the exception.

" Convenience Store Woman" tells about heartbreaking tale of 36-year-old combini ( Convenience store) worker Keiko Furukawa ,a lifelong singleton who has always felt out of place in society. The Japanese noscript is accurately translated as " Convenience Store Human ", which is " Человек-комбини ", a successful attempt to leave the original message of the book untouched.

In the book, we will find several issues facing Japanese society today. The most protruded,alarmingly acute social one is the pressure to conform. It is strongly felt from the first word. Told from the point of a customer stepping foot in the store,the story surrounds us with the familiar sights,sounds, conversations, and smells of a place we know all too well.
First, no stranger to being a victim myself of people who shamelessly break personal boundaries, though nice-sounding and friendly guys they are, are portrayed as a social NORM. In fact, the only way to social success is finding a stable full-time job, getting married, and having children. BUT IS IT THE ONLY WAY ?

" Convenience Store Woman " forces us to question what is " normal " and what is " social misfit " for those who do not fit the mold of " NORMALITY"

Far from being a devil-may-care persona, Keiko seems the most indispensable worker in the store, though it makes her see herself as just " homo kombini " , one more tiny part of a gigantic world mechanism called " шестерёнки этого мира " . However, it is not just Keiko who becomes an outcast, but also her mismatched partner , Shirakara. Sayka Murata describes him almost inhumanely. Similarly. Keiko ' s attitude to him as her pet whom she feeds " animal food " at feeding time gives us much food for thought.

Does she suffer from a mental disorder or is this at least her protection shield,her second skin which she had to wear for survival? Sadly, the issue Murata leaves hanging, tantalizingly , is of Keiko ' s childhood. The details are scant and there are more and more questions flying around us about WHO should we place guilt on !! ? She trained herself to put a lid on her individuality after she was stigmatized for it,at school, and clearly our thirst for finding JUSTICE and a plausible explanation fails every time we start searching for the latter.

Sometimes, I had mixed feelings about Keiko but I heard her voice distinctively while reading the story, and compassion arose inside of me.
If a hammer is always used to destroy instead of expressing sympathy and building a temple of Kindness , Mercy and Grace, our society is doomed to collapse soon..

Like a Convenience store, Murata draws a chilly fluorescent world, in which you want to put on a warm cosy sweater to feel HUMAN .

I believe Sayka Murata 's English debut is brilliant. Her story will have you race through the pages to see what happens next.
It is worth checking out.

( I was reading the novel in Russian)

✈️The pdf is in comment section as usual

#bookreview
#Sayakamurata
#человеккомбини