Keiko Furukura is a 36 year old Japanese woman who has been an employee of the same convenience store for 18 years. This has been her only job. Keiko is neurodivergent who learns at an early age not to say or act on what’s in her mind; she scares people. She has bits of Molly the maid in Nita Prose’s The Maid, and Patric Gagne in her memoir, Sociopath. She knows she has to appear normal in society and with the aid of her sister has developed responses to common situations. Her family still hopes she will be “cured” and find a husband and have children.
The book is told in first person by Keiko who relates her life in the store and her marginal home life and considers her place in society. She observes:
“I’m a convenience store worker, a cog in society. This is the only way I can be normal.”
“My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me”
”The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects.”
I like the character of Keiko and don’t find her sad or pathetic. The author does well in portraying a neurodivergent person in a “normal” world faced with pressures from family and friends who don’t understand how she can stay in a dead-end job.
In the end this is an affirming story of someone marginalized by society but not by herself and I cheered Keiko on. It’s a good story and has interesting and relatable characters and I learned something from reading it.
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