I’m back at Splice this week with a review of Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori). It’s the story of Keiko Furukura, who has worked at a convenience store for 18 years because it is the only place she feels ‘normal’ – and now her carefully ordered existence is under threat…

Convenience Store Woman has turned out to be one of my favourite books of the year. It challenges the reader to empathise with Keiko, then builds up to one of the most powerful endings I have read in a long time.

The review itself is one of my longer ones, about 2,000 words. It was a pleasure to get under the skin of a novel that had affected me so much; I hope you enjoy reading the result.

Book details

Convenience Store Woman (2016) by Sayaka Murata, tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori (2018), Portobello Books, 176 pages, paperback (source: personal copy).