Piper Nuelle

I’m going to be honest right off the bat here, this book defeated me and it has become a DNF (otherwise known as a Did Not Finish) in my book pile and I have already donated it to a charity stall in my local supermarket where they sell second hand books to make money for charity.

Now, I picked this book up when I was on holiday in Lanzarote. I had finished the two books I had taken with me to read and when we got to the airport to get our flight back home to the UK, we found out it had been delayed and we had pretty much an eight hour wait at the airport. The hotel we had stayed at had an early check out time, and we could have maybe gone out to explore the island a bit on the last day but with suitcases, two disabilities and two kids, plus we thought our plane was going to be much earlier, we didn’t see the point in traipsing around and just headed straight to the airport in a taxi. So, we ended up barricading ourselves in between the two coffee shops that were based on the Lanzarote side of the airport and sat it out until we were allowed to check in and head into the duty free zone. We ended up flitting between the two coffee shops and drinking enough coffee to wake a small demonic army so we didn’t annoy anyone or get moved on.

One of the only shops on the Lanzarote side of the airport other than one that sold coffee, was a small shop that sold magazines, books, sweets, snacks and some souvenirs. It was in this shop that I came across this book.

I had just finished a book that was a translated from Japanese to English and I had really enjoyed it, it was by Michiko Aoyama and was called – What you are looking for is in the library. This book made me smile, it was heart warming, sweet and just proper feel good with mini short stories that all interconnected. So when I came across the book – The Convenience store by the sea by Sonoko Machida, I anticipated it to be fairly similar. But… It wasn’t to be and wasn’t for me.

I began reading it, and I was introduced to one character who had driven their car to this convenience store but left in a hurry when loads of women pounced in to see the handsome cashier… or something like that. But then it shifted to someone else and the story jumped around a lot which I couldn’t keep up with. I think the story does consist of short stories within the story but it just felt a little disjointed.

I read around 100 pages and I kept trying to go back to it with fresh eyes every so often to try and fall into it, but it just wasn’t calling to me and it became a chore to read. A bit like when you have to read a book for an essay but you don’t really enjoy the book, it just turns your brain off.

It is such a shame because the book cover was beautiful and embossed, and originally I thought the blurb sounded right up my street seen as I have enjoyed Japanese translated books before. But I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t really identify with any of the characters. I also think my problem may stem from actually working in a convenience store for six years before becoming a full time writer, and there is nothing nice about working in retail and with the public lol. Now, Japan and the UK are two completely different countries and have completely different cultural norms and manners. I imagine Japan to have an amazing customer and retail worker attitude, where everyone has to be kind, tidy and polite (Yes I know there will be some exceptions) But as a whole they are generally known as a polite mannered people especially when compared to us ‘rough-ians’ that reside in the UK. The UK of course is a totally different kettle of fish entirely.

Working in retail and in a convenience store is soul destroying, it is like working in literal hell on earth! Customers are rude and sometimes unbearable. In my six years in retail and bearing in mind I was a ‘Key worker’ during covid… I was spat at, trod on, screamed at, accused of being dumb, told I only worked there because I was stupid, threatened to be attacked because I had to ID people to sell alcohol or tobacco products, had people try and do drugs in the toilets, people would walk in after looking after their horses and tread horse poo and manure all over the store and we would have to clean it, people would also actually ‘S**T’ themselves and let it fall out their trousers onto the floor, tread it around and yet again, we would have to clean it up and so on…

And then there was the staff and management!!! Devils in no disguises the lot of them… I worked at the same company over two stores over six years, I tried to work my way up but… I was told ‘NO’ because; I was a woman, because I had a health condition that actually I never took a day off from because I wanted to climb the ladder so much I worked through it, through all my pain etc, even when I had operations I would just soldier on and come back and work hard. I was told no one liked me, even though I got on with most of the staff I worked with, but I worked the night shifts, and the day staff hated the night staff so I was hated because of the shifts I worked and they day staff lived in the managers pockets. I was trained to do management responsibilities three times over the years in preparation to be promoted and then three times, they denied me and chose someone else at the last minute… And what made me finally leave was when they decided once again to overlook me for promotion and my boss told me he ‘hated’ me and would never promote me because he didn’t like me, so he promoted another girl from a sister store… I handed my notice in and left… But what made it hilariously funny was…She quit and went back to her old store and role after just a few months!!! That of course made me laugh hard…

I was also told I didn’t need to know the job I just needed to be able to boss people around so they would do it all for me… But I am one of those people where I would not ask someone to do something without having done it myself first to know if it is safe, do able but also if it is low or degrading task that the staff didn’t think I was doing it as a power move, I wanted to show that I would do the mucky work if I had to as well… And that was all wrong. Moral of the story is, they have been through so many managers since I left because no one likes it there and hates it lol and that to me is some big KARMA!!!

But I digress… Kind of.

My experience has given me a view of working in convenience and reading this kind hearted book about a convenience store made me laugh and feel like it was silly when these characters in the book where working at a store called ‘Tenderness’ and being kind and humble and all the rest… When in real life, at least in the UK it is not like that.

Maybe things got lost in translation? Maybe I might have liked the book more if I hadn’t worked in retail before? Maybe my experiences have made me bias and instantly find the book hard because all I could see what the store I had previously worked in.

What ever the reason, I couldn’t finish it. Now that is not to say it is a bad book, it’s not, it just wasn’t for me and maybe someone else may read it and love it. Which is why I always donate my old books that I no longer want and or need, because someone else might adopt them, read them and love them.

I hope you enjoyed my review. Sorry it wasn’t as thorough as I usually am but seen as I didn’t finish it I couldn’t go into too much detail. Have you read it? Did you like it? Was it just me being sensitive to my life work experiences?

xo Piper xo