Her sole connection with the human world is her younger sister, who bridges the gap by explaining to her why people find her behaviour odd, and advises her on how to act so as to avoid their scrutiny or approbation. Keiko’s difference, her honest engagement with the world, resulted in a traumatic childhood in which everyone concentrated on making her normal, forcing her to fit in with society, “curing” her of an ailment that no one could clearly describe to her. She does the things she thinks seem normal, and this excludes her from the communion of human society, in which normal is neither natural nor rational but a construction of dubious logic, upheld by mutual consent (or more properly, the mutual fear of being expelled from the social collective). Its protagonist, Keiko Furukura, has never fit in. Despite appearances, Sayaka Murata opts instead to tackle a deeper, universal problem: the anomie imposed by humanity’s social condition.Ĭonvenience Store Woman hints at the contemporary, but its theme is eternal.
For a novelist, the anomie imposed by the modern condition - a world of alienated, objectified, neoliberal subjects - is a creative source of immense potential.
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