Shelf Life

"Convenience Store Woman," a novel by Sayaka Murata

Author Sayaka Murata

As a child, Keiko is told she doesn’t fit in. On the playground, her schoolmates find a dead bird and sniff sadly about “the poor thing.” Keiko says to her mother, “Let’s eat it! . . . Daddy likes yakitori, doesn’t he?” When two boys are fighting at school, Keiko ends the dispute by taking a shovel to the boys’ heads. And when, for n…