9 Of The Best Books Like Convenience Store Woman By Sayaka Murata

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“People who are considered normal enjoy putting those who aren’t on trial, you know.”

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If you loved Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, you’re probably looking for more books that capture that same quiet strangeness, social satire, and thought-provoking look at what it means to fit in This modern Japanese classic has become a cult favourite on the back of its offbeat humour, minimalist storytelling, and unforgettable depiction of a woman content with living outside society’s expectations. Thankfully, there are plenty of books like Convenience Store Woman that explore similar themes – from loneliness and identity, to conformity and rebellion. Whether you’re pulled to quirky Japanese fiction, introspective literary novels, or stories about unconventional women carving their own paths, this has something for you. Here are the best books similar to Convenience Store Woman to add to your reading list – each one offering a fresh, strange, and profoundly human take on what it means to belong. 

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Convenience Store Woman Summary

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family nor in school. But when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, she understands the rules of social interaction – many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual – and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues. Keiko is very happy, but the people closest to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband and begin a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action. 

The English language debut from one of the most talented writers in Japan, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed take on modern work culture and the pressures we all face to conform, as well as a fresh and charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine. 

Earthlings – Sayaka Murata

Kicking off our list of books like Convenience Store Woman is another one of Sayaka Murata’s most beloved works, Earthlings. Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin, Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. 

Now Natsuki has grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki’s family are increasing, her friends wonder why she’s still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki’s childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself for a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it? 

Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe that has been serving carefully-brewed coffee for over one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer. 

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers need to sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and, finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. Similar to Convenience Store Woman, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time? 

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Strange Weather In Tokyo – Hiromi Kawkami

Tsukiko is drinking alone in her local sake bar when, by chance, she meets one of her old high school teachers and, unable to remember his name, she falls back into her old habit of referring to him as “Sensei.” After their first encounter, Tsukiko and Sensei continue to meet. 

Together, they share edamame beans, bottles of cold beer, and a trip to the mountains to eat wild mushrooms. As their friendship deepens, Tsukiko comes to realise that the solace she has found with Sensei could be something more. Hiromi Kawkami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo is a tender, understated story about loneliness and unexpected companionship, the perfect read after you’ve finished Convenience Store Woman. 

The New Me – Halle Butler

Thirty-year-old Millie just can’t seem to pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job, only to return home to fixate on all the ways she should change her life. When the possibility of a full-time job arises, it seems to bring the better life she’s envisioning – one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, and perhaps financial independence. 

But with it also comes the paralysing realisation, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become. Like Convenience Store Woman, Halle Butler’s The New Me is a darkly hilarious and devastating descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture. 

The Idiot – Elif Batuman

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she’s never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but the emails they exchange seem to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. 

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads back to the Hungarian countryside. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris. Selin’s summer in Europe doesn’t resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experience of American college students, or indeed any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. 

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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say precisely what she’s thinking. However, everything changes for her when she meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. 

Perfect for anyone looking for a slightly more upbeat book similar to Convenience Store Woman about a quirky heroine navigating the world, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a smart,  warm, and uplifting story full of weirdness and wit, all about how the only way of surviving is by opening your heart. 

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My Year Of Rest And Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Speaking of quirky heroines, our narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, paid for by her handsome inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibilities, what could be so terribly wrong? 

Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the peak of her prowess. 

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The Guest Cat – Takashi Hiraide

A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day, a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. 

Soon, they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all of its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife – the days have more light and colour. Takashi Hiraide’s novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, until something happens… 

Breasts And Eggs – Mieko Kawakami

Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami is a portrait of modern womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women: thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has travelled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures of growing up. Her silence proves to be a catalyst for all these women to confront their fears and frustrations. 

On another hot summer’s day, ten years on, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless. One of the best books like Convenience Store Woman, Breast and Eggs is sharp and incisive as it explores womanhood and societal pressures in Japan.