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“Quirky Keiko Furukura comes to awkward life in Nancy Wu’s hilarious narration…an energetic delivery that keeps listeners engaged from the first chapter…Wu has us laughing out loud, especially at Keiko’s unexpected forays into love. This is a rollicking story…paired with a narrator who can maximize the characters’ discomfort for our humor.”
— AudioFile
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“A weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book.”
— Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author
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"Brilliant, witty, and sweet…[Keiko’s] story of conforming for convenience (literally) is one that women all over the world know all too well…but Murata’s sparkly writing and knack for odd, beautiful details are totally her own.”
— Vogue
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“Written in plain-spoken prose, the slim volume focuses on a character who in many ways personifies a demographic panic in Japan.”
— New York Times
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“[Keiko] is an anti-Bartleby, abandoning any shred of identity outside of her work…It may make readers anxious, but the book itself is tranquil—dreamy, even—rooting for its employee-store romance from the bottom of its synthetic heart.”
— New Yorker
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“Murata herself spent years as a convenience store employee. And one pleasure of this book is her detailed portrait of how such a place actually works. Yet the book’s true brilliance lies in Murata’s way of subverting our expectations.”
— NPR
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“A hilarious novel…Convenience Store Woman mocks the culture of work, the employee’s devotion to their patron saint, and pokes fun at the conservative mindset. For what is a young woman worth if she has neither professional ambition nor a desire to get married?”
— Marie-France (France)
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“A love story pulled out of the deep-freeze shelves of the heart…True love is the simple and beautiful moral of this unusual yet uplifting story.”
— Die Zeit (Germany)
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“A spare, quietly brilliant novel…Though she feels like the odd one out, it’s her frank appraisal of the systems of the world that reveals the absurdity of everyone else.”
— BuzzFeed
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“Magical…Sayaka Murata has written the 7-11 Madame Bovary….This is a love story. Only the love affair here is between a woman and the convenience store in which she works.”
— Literary Hub
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“Murata’s brilliant Convenience Store Woman…has been seen as a Gothic romance between a ‘misfit and a store’ and as…an artful grotesque of modern personal branding.”
— Millions
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“A hilariously deadpan, absurdist send-up of rigorous social norms in aging, postwar Japan…Keiko’s fidelity to her role as a cog in the machine is put to the test and the result is as quietly unsettling as any one of Kafka’s short stories.”
— BuzzFeed
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“Stunning…This is a moving, funny, and unsettling story about how to be a ‘functioning adult’ in today’s world.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“A dazzling English-language debut in a crisp translation by Takemori, rich in scathingly entertaining observations on identity, perspective, and the suffocating hypocrisy of ‘normal’ society.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“While Murata’s novel focuses on life in Japanese culture, her storytelling will resonate with all people and experiences.”
— Library Journal
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“Murata skillfully navigates the line between the book’s wry and weighty concerns and ensures readers will never conceive of the ‘pristine aquarium’ of a convenience store in quite the same way. A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Quirky, deadpan, poignant, and quietly profound, it is a gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the world.”
— Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
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“A haunting, dark, and often hilarious take on society’s expectations of the single woman. As an extra bonus, it totally transformed my experience of going to convenience stores in Tokyo.”
— Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
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“I was really amazed by Convenience Store Woman and the particular reality it exquisitely portrays.”
— Ryu Murakami, author of Almost Transparent Blue