Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Published in Japan in 2016; published in translation by Grove Press on June 12, 2018

As a child, Keiko Furukura decided to teach another child some manners by braining him with a shovel, a decision she regarded as perfectly reasonable. She was thereafter viewed as a strange and troublesome child. Realizing that her straightforward approach to life kept getting her into trouble, she learned to mimic the behavior of other kids and to follow instructions, never speaking or acting on her own initiative. The conformist strategy worked for her, as it does for many people.

Convenience Store Woman follows Keiko’s life from college, when she takes a part-time job in a Smile Mart, until Keiko is in her late 30s. The convenience store job suits her because a convenience store “is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated.” In other words, conform or leave. Keiko adapts perfectly to the convenience store lifestyle, faithfully following her trainer’s instructions about shouting greetings to customers, looking them in the eye, smiling, asking if they want anything else, bagging purchases and making change. Thanks to the scripted work and clear expectations, Keiko finally feels comfortable interacting with others. It is her first time as “a normal cog in society.” She is so happy that she is still working there eighteen years later.

Keiko draws her malleable personality from her co-workers, taking a bit from each one until she has amalgamized a personality of her own, albeit one that changes as a function of employee turnover. She believes she has been “infected” by their speech patterns and vocabulary, causing her own speech patterns and word choices to change as new co-workers replace the old ones. Even her gestures change as she absorbs the behavior of new workers. Keiko has no desire to look for a better job because this job has allowed her to master the art of pretending to be a person.

The story has several themes. One is socially-enforced normalization. Being a convenience store worker is fine for a college student, but as time goes on, Keiko doesn’t fit in with society’s expectations because she lacks the ambition to find a better job or to pursue marriage. On the few occasions she socializes, she is ostracized or criticized because she doesn’t fit society’s vision of how a maturing woman should live her life. Living a fiction of normalcy isn’t easy, particularly for a woman; to justify her low-end job as a middle-age woman, Keiko contrives excuses and finds a relationship partner, even if the platonic and rather unpleasant relationship is one of convenience.

The culture of gossip is another theme. Keiko is happiest when she is talking with co-workers about essential convenience store issues, like whether the store can make its sales goal for deep-fried chicken skewers. When co-workers realize Keio is having contact with a fired worker in her free time, they can’t stop grilling her about her relationship. They also feel compelled to lecture the ex-worker and Keiko about their respective failings. In Japan as everywhere, people want to meddle when they should mind their own damn business.

Perhaps the overriding theme is the importance of being true to one’s nature, regardless of society’s expectations. Keiko’s sister is distressed about having to cope with the fact that Keiko is not “normal,” but Keiko is content just the way she is. Her life has definition. The convenience store speaks to her in a voice that only she can hear. She knows exactly what the convenience store needs. Being a convenience store worker makes her happy, while the prospect of looking for a better job or getting married and having sex are antithetical to Keiko’s ability to live a fulfilling life.

That, I think, is the great lesson of Convenience Store Woman: when someone is happy and content to live in a way that doesn’t harm others, whether the person has a “normal” life isn’t the business of anyone else. Being happy and harmless is just fine, and trying to change a person who isn't hurting anyone because they don't "fit in" is an act of cruelty. Convenience Store Woman teaches that profound lesson in an allegorical story that is both appealing and deceptive in its simplicity.

RECOMMENDED

Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne

Published by Hogarth on July 24, 2018

Only to Sleep is a Philip Marlowe novel. To his credit, Lawrence Osborne gives the impression of Raymond Chandler without trying to ape his style. Robert Parker tried to emulate Chandler’s style in a couple of Marlowe novels and wasn’t up to the task. Osborne writes in an eloquent style of his own that doesn’t purport to be the second coming of Chandler.

Osborne also makes a wise choice in crafting a novel that takes place decades after the Chandler novels. Parker couldn’t quite capture the west coast noir that Chandler invented; Osborne wisely chose not to try. He does, I think, engage in a credible exploration of Marlowe’s soul as it might have evolved in the detective’s declining years, and he incorporates elements of noir without trying to recreate a literary time and place that belonged to Chandler alone.

Osborne’s Marlowe is 72, retired, living in Mexico and fighting boredom when two men from an insurance company ask him to investigate a death that might be suspicious. An American developer named Donald Zinn drowned near a remote coastal village in Mexico, leaving a good bit of debt and a big insurance policy behind. His widow, Dolores Araya, identified the body and had it cremated in Mexico. The insurance company wonders whether Zinn might have been involved in something illegal, which would give it an excuse not to pay the widow. The men ask Marlowe to find out what Zinn had been doing in Mexico in the days before his death.

Marlowe talks to the widow and to the federales and to local fishermen before he gets a tip that sends him inland to talk to the man who went into hiding after finding Zinn’s body. Marlowe later takes the reader on a tour of inland Mexico, to places “of lanterns on chains and dozing habitués perched on sofas.” The local color is convincing; perhaps Osborne drove around Mexico before he wrote the novel, conducting research while he swatted mosquitos and drank cerveza.

The plot of Only to Sleep is much simpler than the convoluted story Chandler told in The Big Sleep, from which it repeatedly draws the titular metaphor of death. Osborne’s story at least makes sense, and to that extent simplicity is a virtue. Most of the detecting is done in the novel’s first half. In fact, the mystery has been solved the novel’s midway point. The second half addresses a mystery about Marlowe: now that he knows the truth, what will he do about it? He’ll get himself into trouble, of course, because as often as Marlowe decides it is time to let something go, he finds himself incapable of letting loose ends dangle.

This version of Marlowe is worn down and made porous by a life filled with grit. He dreams about the victims of violent death, some of whom he watched or helped die. He carries a cane, both to help him walk and because it conceals a sword, a last line of defense for a man who can’t use his fists as ably as he did in younger days. Marlowe relishes the opportunity to feel alive, “not yet senile and not yet shelved,” one final time before he returns to retirement and the inevitability of slow decline. Readers should also welcome the opportunity to join the icon of noir in one last adventure. It isn’t Chandler, but it stands on its own merit.

RECOMMENDED

Before Mars by Emma Newman

Published by Ace on April 17, 2018

Before Mars is the third book in Emma Newman’s Planetfall series, but it can easily be read as a standalone. The series adopts the common science fiction background of governments that have merged with large corporations (gov-corps), a logical extension of our current reality. Citizen-employees are assigned jobs and living quarters by a gov-corp. On a positive note, the gov-corps have dialed back some of the religious right’s influence on government, because (as the gov-corps see it) narrow-mindedness does nothing to advance profits. On the other hand, such human rights as people have are guaranteed only by their employment contracts.

Anna Kubrin is a geologist but she is also an artist. One of the gov-corps, GaborCorp, has exclusive rights to Mars, where it films a popular television show. Gabor thinks Martian landscapes will be a good investment, so it sends Anna to Mars.

Anna doesn’t much mind going, although it means leaving behind her husband and daughter. Anna’s husband was never right for her, so she isn’t likely to miss him. Anna is ashamed to admit to herself that babies are frightening, small children are boring, and she is too selfish to be a fully involved mother. So she might miss her daughter a bit, but she knows that when she returns to Earth, she’ll give her daughter a hug before moving on to something more intellectually stimulating. I’m glad my mother wasn’t like Anna, but I appreciate her honesty. And I appreciate Newman’s development of a complex character who might not be particularly likable, but whose introspection and self-criticism allow the reader to understand her and perhaps to sympathize with her situation.

Some of the other scientists (slash television stars) on Mars are less sympathetic than Anna. In particular, Arnolfi, the GaborCorp neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who assesses her, believes she is suffering from a form of psychosis that is triggered by the immersions (virtual realities) in which people live as they make the long journey to Mars. When Anna arrives and unpacks, she finds a note that tells her not to trust Arnolfi, but the reader feels that distrust instinctively.

Anna recognizes the painted note as her own style, but she doesn’t recall painting it. Then she notices that some of the art supplies she packed didn’t make it to Mars, and that the wedding ring she packed is missing the engraving it once had. Later she finds a footprint in a part of Mars where nobody has ever walked (or so the AI tells her). Perhaps her brain implant is messing with her. As Anna and science fiction fans know, a brain implant should never be trusted. Another other option is that she’s gone mad, which is part of her family history and therefore Anna’s greatest fear. About a third of the way through the novel, as Anna is playing an immersion, she discovers that she is not alone in thinking that something is very wrong on GaborCorp’s Mars.

Before Mars is a science fiction mystery that asks the reader to join Anna in getting to the bottom of an apparent conspiracy, perhaps orchestrated by the AI, to keep Anna in the dark about certain events that are happening, or previously happened, on Mars. The plot is carefully structured, internally consistent, and intelligent. The ending ties together all the clues in a way that is credible and poignant. Before Mars offers a careful balance of plot and characterization. I don’t know if Anna will return in a future Planetfall installment, but I would like to know what happens to her next — and caring about what will happen to a character is a good sign that the novel in which she appears made an emotional impact.

RECOMMENDED

The Throwaway by Michael Moreci

Published by Tor/Forge Books on June 19, 2018

Late in The Throwaway, Mark Strain tells another character about how, as a child, he stood up every day for a weakling who was being beaten by bullies and how he was beaten every day in exchange for his trouble, just because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t believe the story, having read some version of the same self-serving boast too many times in thrillers, but I didn’t believe much of anything about The Throwaway.

The novel begins as Strain, an American, is unwillingly exchanged in a spy swap, handed over to Russian agents after being deported without a hearing. A lawyer and K Street lobbyist, Strain has a pregnant wife back in D.C., which didn’t stop him from flirting with a med student named Alice, who turned out to be a Russian spy named Ania.

Strain was lobbying for a firm that bid on a cybersecurity contract with the Pentagon. The contract involves software called Verge, in which the Russians have a great interest. Some of Strain’s methods to secure the contract were aggressive; others were illegal. A Texas Congressman who doesn’t take kindly to extortion plays a role in Strain’s downfall, as do others whose identities become known to Strain toward the end of the story. The identity of the key conspirator will be obvious to thriller fans, who will find little of interest in a novel that holds no surprises, apart from the convenient help he receives from two characters who have no credible reason to help him.

To clear his name, Strain must escape from his Russian captors, and from Russia, so that the can return to D.C. to save his wife and unborn child, as well as America. Impossible? Nothing is impossible in a modern thriller. Unfortunately, Michael Moreci failed to provide the kind of entertainment value that encourages a reader to suspend disbelief in an implausible plot.

The novel makes an attempt to explain how Strain might be deported without a hearing, but it’s the kind of explanation that would only make sense if nobody in America knew what was happening. Strain is vilified on national news. Talking heads on Fox News are even talking about sending Strain’s unborn baby to Russia, which only strikes me as credible because I doubt that any talking head on Fox has ever read the Constitution beyond the Second Amendment. But given that the entire nation knows that Strain is being sent “back to Russia” (from which he didn’t come), surely a good many people would have pointed out that American citizens are entitled to some sort of due process before they are deported, even by the lax standards of Homeland Security and ICE. Deporting an American citizen to a country where he’s never lived, and doing it full view of the media, just isn’t something that even the most nefarious conspirator in the imaginary Deep State could orchestrate.

In any event, Strain is sent to Russia along with real spies, including Ania. In Russia he is treated as a hero and a celebrity, which he uses to his advantage while escaping, despite not knowing a word of Russian. That didn’t strike me as plausible. Nor did NSA’s decision to send an assassin to Russia to take him out. It’s the kind of decision that is made to further the plot, not because it makes any sense. Deciding to kill the pregnant wife is equally senseless.

With all that going against the intrepid Strain, he must make his way home, which (spoiler alert) he does with remarkable ease. Actually, it isn’t possible to spoil the plot, because it is so easy to see what’s coming. It just isn’t easy to believe (or care) about any of it.

More examples that elevated my incredulity level: Strain’s wife bluffs her way into a secure area housing the Pentagon’s mainframe computer, not because anyone at the Pentagon would fall for the bluff, but because she needs to get inside to move the plot forward. As is common in thrillers, she brings along a computer nerd who was apparently born knowing just where in the mainframe to find the particular data she needs and to understand what the machine language is doing just by glancing at it. Of course, Strain also manages to get into the Pentagon, despite being known to the world as a Russian spy who has been deported, because he also needs to do that to move the plot forward. Does the Pentagon really have no security besides a guy standing at the back door?

Apart from dialog that is too often forced, Moreci’s prose style is serviceable. His characterization is about average for a thriller. The Throwaway isn’t an awful novel, but the plot is preposterous and the ease with which Strain overcomes adversity deprives this thriller of any thrills.

NOT RECOMMENDED

OK, Mr. Field by Katharine Kilalea

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Crown/Tim Duggan Books on July 17, 2018

Mr. Field is a pianist who can no longer perform, having injured his left wrist in a train crash. He uses his injury settlement to buy a house he saw in a newspaper article. The house is owned by Hannah Kallenbach, the widow of the architect who designed it.

The House for the Study of Water is built on an incline, supported by stilts, and can only be reached by climbing a staircase. It is a replica of the Villa Savoye, but it has a view of the sea near Cape Town rather than a view of rural French landscape. The House seems to be in a constant struggle with wind and decay. Perhaps it is a struggle with the outside world. The narrative frequently asks the reader to consider the relationship between people and houses, between people and water, between houses and water. The coastline is eroding, a common metaphor in recent novels for unstoppable change that is an inevitable part of life.

Mr. Field’s lover, Mim, joins him in the house for a time, although she clearly thinks he is a fool for buying it. Mim’s sudden disappearance from the story, leaving her computer and notebooks behind, is something of a mystery. She has driven somewhere, and Mr. Field misses her sometimes, but not quite enough to call her or to search for her.

The story is one of isolation and loneliness, despite the companionship Mr. Field conjures from Hannah Kallenbach, whose continued residence in the house he imagines, as if “the house had ingested some aspect of her presence.” In a dream, Hannah discusses Mr. Field as if performing an autopsy, saying that little is known of the pianist’s heart, except that “once he felt differently” but “these days, he mostly feels the same.” In another dream, a bird describes him as “part of the unhappiness that’s come apart from the total mass of unhappiness.”

Mr. Field sits alone every day, listening to construction sounds and trying to imagine what might make them (e.g., “stones being cleaned in a large washing machine”). He plays the piano, noting that his right hand misses the way his injured left hand used to play. He watches the sea and engages his memories of his first piano teacher, of his mother listening to Chopin, of Mim. He takes in a stray dog who seems to have an unexplained connection to Hannah. He takes evening drives, sometimes passing Hannah’s current house, often sneaking into her yard and sitting outside a window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sometimes he eavesdrops on mysterious conversations she has with a man who visits her frequently.

The reader might ask whether Mr. Field’s obsession with Hannah is unhealthy, or whether the obsession instead gives him a reason to continue living. Mr. Field feels a pang whenever he sees her, “like young love or immature love or new love, love but with a tragic aspect.” Yet Mr. Field makes no attempt to interact with Hannah, perhaps because that would be a step toward losing her, just as he fears losing the newly-acquired dog. (All books are made better by the inclusion of a dog, and this one is no exception. Dogs always have lessons to teach if only humans would learn them.)

What to make of OK, Mr. Field? The story is in some respects difficult to understand. The meaning of a surreal story told by Hannah’s visitor at the end of the novel escaped me (it involves a confusion of identity that can be interpreted in multiple ways), and whether the reader should take other parts of the story literally is not always clear. That makes OK, Mr. Field a challenging book, but like most challenges, this one is not without rewards.

While the story is sad, Katharine Kilalea’s evocative prose is rich with detail and atmosphere. Kilalea makes it possible to empathize with Mr. Field, to understand what it must feel like to live without friends and in a state of depression that makes the anticipation of new friendships impossible. Mr. Field’s interior life is presented in great depth, to the near exclusion of other characters, only two of whom (Hannah and a contractor working nearby) play any role at all in the story Kilalea tells.

This is not a novel for readers who are looking for a happy, life-affirming story, although it is not entirely dreary. It isn’t pleasant to read about depression and loneliness, but the novel is too short to become oppressive in its portrait of despair. Yet readers who make it to the novel’s end will find a bit of comfort in the knowledge that a feeling of emptiness can be recast in a positive light, as a body that has space to store new things. That single revelation makes all the bleakness worthwhile.

RECOMMENDED