Blakwall

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. The book revolves around Keiko Furukura, a thirty six year old oddball, who spent the last eighteen years of her life working at a convenience store. The fact that she does not conform to the society is set from the very beginning of the book. Keiko recalls incidents from her childhood, that to her were normal, but caused distress to others. But to Keiko, being a convenience store worker was a revelation. She has a manual on how to behave with customers. She copies her fellow workers' expressions, speech patterns and behaviours to fit in. If they express anger at something, so does she. Even when with friends, she reacts to situations as her convenience store co-workers would do. Her life revolves around the store.  But to her parents and sister, she needs to be cured. Her friends and their husbands question her lifestyle and her dead end job, suggest her to find someone to, even offering to set her up. Things take a funny turn when Shiraha

White Chrysanthemum is the story of two Korean sisters- Hana and Emi, separated by the second world war. Hana is dragged away by a Japanese soldier to a life of sexual slavery while Emi is left to grow up in war ravaged times. The book is divided into two narratives- Hana’s narrative covers the war years, while in Emi’s chapters it is 2011, and the elderly Emi is still looking for her sister. The sisters are part of the haenyeo community, female sea divers. The book is an account not of war but how war affects people, how wars bring out the worst in men. It isn't an easy book and I found myself crying a lot over the days it took me to go through it. It is an immensely well told testimony of the brutalities of war and it has attempted to recognise the plight of the comfort women, who are yet to receive an apology for the atrocities committed on them. The characters are fictional but the truth it has attempted to show needs to be recognised, so we do not end up denying or