Convenience Store Woman (Buurtsupermens) is about an Asperger-like girl in her thirties who works as a substitute worker in a typical small Japanese neighborhood supermarket from the age of 18.

She has excellent powers of observation.

The neighborhood supermarket is a place that is completely normalized, and recovery will soon come for you, too.

Life at the neighborhood supermarket is entirely predictable for Keiko, and she loves it. However, she meets deadbeat Shiraha, and he changes her life. Shiraha’s arrival throws her structured life into disarray and turns it into chaos.

Just in time, she realizes that she was born a Convenience Store Woman, and that is where she finds happiness.

It is a strange story about fitting into society by not fitting in, which seems to be a theme in Sayuku Murata’s work, as Earthlings (Aardbewoners) has a similar theme. However, that book is way more grim than the light-hearted style of Convenience Store Woman.