Point of View

Sayaka Murata utilizes a first-person narrator for her novel. The Convenience Store Woman’s narrator is its heroine, Keiko. She walks us through the story from her perspective and intimately shares her thoughts, experiences, and views with the reader. It is through her eyes that we witness other characters and the various settings that this story includes. This creates a sense of intimacy between the reader and Keiko, which is necessary, because as a character, she is very removed from feeling and intimacy with others. This allows the reader to break through the barrier that she sets up between herself and her friends, colleagues, and family.

The first-person narrative point of view does not shift at all but remains consistently the voice of Keiko. Her thoughts and internal dialogue are the reader’s constant vehicle into the story. This is significant in understanding how the...