Keiko, convenience store worker by choice and faildaughter by circumstance, is just like me frrr. where Izumi Suzuki's Hit Parade of Tears and Terminal Boredom (my favorite sci-fi books so far) uses the science fiction genre as a vehicle for the alienating, and frequently traumatic, experience of womanhood, Convenience Store Woman acts as a funnier, deadpan, and down-to-earth counterpart with a heroine who could be read as neurodivergent. or, less probably, this book could be a science fiction in disguise: the labor of an alien who discovers itself on Earth and trying, to mixed results, how to fit in feels similarly harrowing to Keiko's attempts at learning how to be an acceptable female specimen in a world designed to dispose of people who can't quite conform. because I'm a glutton for punishment, I would revisit this book to relish in Shihira's misogynist projections totally going past Keiko's head and him becoming her "pet"