![]() Concerned that she’s hurtling towards a childless middle age in a dead-end job, they hanker to “fix” her, begging her to get some therapy or, better still, find a husband. Now part of the “machine of society” and revelling in the newfound safety and comfort of her job, she reckons she’s at long last “pulled off being a ‘person”’.īut now Keiko is 36 years old and her family still isn’t happy. Discovering that she excels at the daily monotone of restocks and product promotions and difficult customers, Keiko finds contentment and self-respect among the brightly lit aisles and hot food cabinets. Her salvation appears when, aged 18, she secures herself a job at the local Smile Mart convenience store and, paying conscientious attention to the training video, realises “it was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech”. Another time she asks her mother if she can eat a dead budgie found in the park. At school she bashes a boy over the head with a shovel to stop him fighting. ![]() Keiko has been a worry to her family all her life, bullied and friendless, her behaviour sometimes even chilling. ![]() N ot all novel titles manage so very literally to describe the contents, but this one – unapologetically deadpan yet enticingly comic – absolutely does. ![]()
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