Agent: Kohei Hattori, the English Agency. This is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a “functioning adult” in today’s world. Murata’s smart and sly novel, her English-language debut, is a critique of the expectations and restrictions placed on single women in their 30s. She strikes a sham marriage deal with a lazy and shifty ex-coworker, which, though it finally makes her “normal” in the eyes of others, throws her entire life and psyche into turmoil. The older she gets, and the further she drifts from milestones like having a “real” job, marrying, and having children, the more her friends and family push her towards change. In fact, she thinks of herself as two Keikos: her real self, who has existed since she was born, and “convenience-store-worker-me.” But normalcy is not static, as Keiko discovers. Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori Please note this edition now comes in 3 separate colour covers randomly supplied to us. Where someone else might find the expected behavior for convenience store workers arbitrary and strict, Keiko thrives under such clear direction, finally finding a way to be normal. The face is round, framed by a sleek seaweed bob, sitting on a small white plate. Keiko, who has a history of strange impulses-wanting to grill and eat a dead bird, pulling down a hysterical teacher’s pants to get her to be quiet-applied to work at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart on a whim. A perky face looks out from the pink-and-blue cover of the American translation of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, originally published in 2016 in Japan, where its publisher says it sold a stunning 660,000 copies. Murata’s slim and stunning Akutagawa Prize–winning novel follows 36-year-old Keiko Furukura, who has been working at the same convenience store for the last 18 years, outlasting eight managers and countless customers and coworkers.
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