Indies Introduce

Fiction

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  Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Trans.)
  Grove Press, 9780802128256, June 12, 2018 (Fiction)
  

  “How can you not be charmed by the main character of Convenience Store Woman? She knows what she wants out of life, and who is anyone to say she needs anything different? The power of this novel is not in a sweeping landscape or journey, but in its intimacy, humor, and empathy for this very human, knowable woman.”

  Tyler Goodson, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)
  
  

  “This strange debut is an exploration of the psyche of a woman who feels removed from the emotional threads of humanity. Once she recognizes this ‘fault’ in herself, she embraces the freedom that being quiet, and therefore left alone, can bring her. In college, she gets a job at a newly opened convenience store and quickly becomes a creature of habit reliant on the redundancy of the store’s sterile environment. The novel picks up with her having worked there for 18 years. While not ready to make any changes, she is ready to have people stop prying into her life and happiness. This novel is a strong commentary on obsessive work culture, but I recommend it more for its calculated, removed prose and its unique narrative and characters.”

   

  Ely Watson, A Room of One’s Own Bookstore (Madison, WI)