I love a good Japanese I-novel. It seems that Murata’s publisher resists this categorization, but come on now, there’s just no way it’s not. The voice of Keiko, our convenience store woman, in this story is so unique, so endearing; dare I say it, even relatable at times.

From anecdotes of Keiko’s childhood I knew that the perspective of this story would be something completely different than anything else I’ve read before. Bemusedly and amusely I read her recount of a silly scuffle between two schoolboys in elementary. All her classmates were crying for them to stop, and she fulfills their wish by taking a heavy spade and smacking one on the head, only to be confused as to why everyone started crying more.

Regrettably there is less hilarity to be found in adult life, where everyone is supposed to be a functioning member of society. Keiko has been at the same store for `18 years, going through eight managers. She is a model employee–punctual every day without fail, attentive to small details in the store’s operations, bright and bubbly to the customers. But this occupation is pretty much all there is to her life. At 36 years old, her friends and family start to nudge her to do more.

Keiko is pretty content with everything. What drives the plot is the introduction of Shiraha, the lazy, insolent, downright creepy new hire of the store who is laid off in less than a week. Later, by some cosmic misalignment, she runs into him, now unemployed and homeless, and comes up with the preposterous idea to take him home so that her acquaintances will stop bothering her. And it works. Staggeringly well.

Keiko is only starting to understand the norm of the society around her, while Shiraha fully understands and knows how to take advantage of those norms, which puts Keiko in an incredibly dangerous position. Shiraha can bring nothing to the table, he can do no good to society, but what he can do is leech off of Keiko. She doesn’t see this, bless her heart, so it leaves us anxiously waiting for how she will break free of him. As the remaining pages dwindled I even questioned if Murata was kind enough to give us that ending. Come on Keiko, snap out of it, please, someone, save her! If not from her (true?) self at least from this guy!

Some characters come close, I’ll give them credit. Keiko’s sister senses duplicity from this supposed new partner and comes to check it out for herself, only to hear of the full truth from Keiko upon probing, that Shiraha is useful to Keiko because his existence allows her to keep up a pretense of normalcy. Her sister is so stricken that she will grasp any thread which dispels this truth, and Shiraha, in an expert display of manipulation, provides the explanation that he just had a fight with Keiko. So that’s that, but we get a second chance from Shiraha’s sister-in-law, who comes to collect his debt. She warns Keiko about Shiraha’s character, how he is a good for nothing, but again Shiraha is able to appease her by making up on the spot marriage and career plans for himself and Keiko.

Keiko’s obliviousness is heartwrenching and infuriating–imagine reading, “I’m going to be a parasite on you, [Keiko] Furukura, whatever it takes” immediately followed by her narration of, “I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about.” Shiraha is the cost of conformity that Keiko must put up with in order to find acceptance within society. I got a general anti-conformist vibe from this novel, so I figured midway through reading that the end goal is for Keiko to expel Shiraha and keep on at it her way outside of the norms of society. Normally I don’t spoil stories, but I think a tiny, covert spoiler here actually might help the book’s retention: the ending is satisfactory enough. I don’t know if it counts as character growth, but honestly, close enough. With Keiko we’ll take what we can get.

I don’t really know what to feel about this novel. We are supposed to at once be irritated by Shiraha but also be empathetic to his complaints about how society is still in the stone age, since only those who provide value to the tribe can find a place. I have to wonder though, is there truly anything wrong with that? The topmost goal of any entity is to survive sustainably, and it is unsustainable for any society to keep around people like Shiraha. I think society, at the core level, is just a whole lot of people working in one big team. In any properly organized team, if a member doesn’t contribute, they’re just kicked off the team. Obviously it’s important to have the proper support structures in place to make sure everyone has the opportunity to contribute, but there’s nothing it can do about those who don’t want to contribute in the first place. And yes, not everyone will contribute the same amount, but that is also another point that this novel beautifully addresses–it’s completely okay to be Keiko, to be a simple person with an honest job, to be part of this group of people that is often looked down upon but are nevertheless a basis for society to function.