BY ANNE CROWLEY
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAID:
“Not all novel titles manage so very literally to describe the contents, but this one – unapologetically deadpan yet enticingly comic – absolutely does.
“Keiko has been a worry to her family all her life, bullied and friendless, her behaviour sometimes even chilling…Her salvation appears when, aged 18, she secures a job at the local convenience store and, paying conscientious attention to the training video, realises ‘it was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech’… Now part of the ‘machine of society’, she reckons she’s at long last ‘pulled off being a ‘person’.
“But now Keiko is 36 years old and her family still isn’t happy. Concerned that she’s hurtling towards a childless middle age in a dead-end job, they hanker to ‘fix’ her.” The Guardian.
MY THOUGHTS:
This is a quick read, and I found the main character, Keiko, intriguing, if not the story itself!
A couple of anecdotes from Keiko’s childhood show her as logical in the extreme, and lacking the ability to empathise with the emotional reactions of others. On finding a dead bird in a park, while other children mourn it, she wants to take it home and cook it – like yakitori. When two boys are fighting in school and the crowd yells, “someone stop them”, Keiko grabs a shovel and hits one over the head – the quickest way to stop them. While she intellectually knows (from her family’s reactions) she has done something wrong, she doesn’t understand why it’s wrong.
The convenience store’s operational manual provides a very detailed prescription for Keiko to function – one that isn’t available in other jobs or in life (apart from her sister’s occasional help with a script to manage awkward social interactions). So she stays there for 18 years, happy with her routines and surroundings, much to the concern of her family and society that she will be a failure as a woman.
Constantly under pressure to conform, Keiko mimics and mirrors the behaviours and language styles of her convenience store colleagues. “My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me. I am currently made up of 30% Mrs. Izumi, 30% Sugawara, 20% the manager, and the rest absorbed from my past colleagues… I think the same goes for most people.”
Fitting in is a matter of survival. Following the dismissal of another convenience store worker, Keiko reflects, “…If I ever became a foreign object, I’d no doubt be eliminated in much the same way…so that’s why I need to be cured”. Keiko takes some desperate measures to enable her to fit, and thus lift the pressure, including her involvement with Shiraha – a totally obnoxious and shallow character, who was very uninteresting in my opinion.
The reactions of my book club friends to the book and particularly Keiko were diverse in the extreme. Some found her charming and simple, some wondered if neurodivergence explained some of her behaviours, others felt she was psychopathic, pointing to her seeing herself as machine-like, not sure how to be human. (Please note, none of us are experts in psychology or psychiatry.)
Most were pleased we had read the book as it made for an interesting discussion, but only one found it thoroughly enjoyable. Your thoughts?
