Our score
Excellent
Listen free with a trial
Start a free Audible trialNew to Audible? Start a free trial to listen: stream or download titles in the Audible app and cancel anytime.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the site at no extra cost to you.
Convenience Store Woman Audiobook by Sayaka Murata— narrated by Nancy Wu
Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman is a slim, strange, and quietly radical novel about Keiko Furukura, a thirty-six-year-old woman who has built a stable self out of the rhythms of a Tokyo convenience store. It's a sharp, deadpan look at conformity and what it costs to fake being normal.
Why the audiobook wins
Nearly everything this novel does depends on tone, and Nancy Wu finds exactly the right one: flat, precise, and just slightly off, a voice that reports Keiko's devotion to convenience-store rhythms with the same reverence other people reserve for church. That deadpan is the whole joke and the whole unease, and Wu holds it note-perfect for the entire book.
At under four hours, this is a listen you can finish in an afternoon, which suits its concentrated, almost airtight construction. Ginny Tapley Takemori's translation gives Wu clean, unadorned sentences to work with, and she never oversells the strangeness, letting Keiko's logic sound perfectly reasonable until you notice it isn't.
Few audiobooks this short leave as much of a residue. Wu's narration is the reason Keiko's voice stays in your head well after the credits, and one free trial is more than enough to hear it.
Already a member? Go straight to Convenience Store Woman on Audible
Prefer to read it?
Audiobook questions
- Who narrates the Convenience Store Woman audiobook?
- Nancy Wu narrates the audiobook edition of Convenience Store Woman.
- How long is the Convenience Store Woman audiobook?
- The audiobook runs 3 hr 36 min.
- Is the Convenience Store Woman audiobook worth listening to?
- We scored Convenience Store Woman 4.0 out of 5. Nearly everything this novel does depends on tone, and Nancy Wu finds exactly the right one: flat, precise, and just slightly off, a voice that reports Keiko's devotion to convenience-store rhythms with the same reverence other people reserve for church. That deadpan is the…
- Can I listen to Convenience Store Woman free with an Audible trial?
- Eligible new Audible members can use a free-trial credit to listen in the Audible app. Eligibility and current offer terms are set by Audible.
