The Convenience Store by the Sea: The stunning new night edition of the quirky, charming Japanese bestseller readers worldwide have fallen in love with
Tucked into the coastal town of Mojiko, in Kitakyushu, sits a 24/7 convenience store called Tenderness. It's open at midnight. It's open at dawn. The lights never dim, the coffee stays hot, and somehow, the shelves seem to hold exactly what you didn't know you needed. This special night edition celebrates the success of Sonoko Machida's internationally beloved novel, presenting everything that charmed readers the first time around in a striking new package. On the surface, it's an ordinary shop. The manager happens to have his own fan club, the regulars are a wonderfully strange bunch, and the menu reads like a love letter to Japanese convenience food: egg sandos, ramen, parfaits, crispy fried chicken, soba. But Tenderness is quietly something more. Staff who know your name. Warmth that accumulates, visit by visit, like a place that's been waiting for you. Machida structures her story as a series of linked vignettes, each one following a different customer or employee through the store's glass doors. The result is a gentle, oddly absorbing portrait of community, small kindnesses, and what it means to live well. Bruno Navasky's translation preserves the lightness of touch that has drawn comparisons to Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Readers and critics alike have described it as 'bubble bath fiction' (The Herald) and 'a delightful tale of community and connection' (My Weekly). Those labels are fair, though they undersell the book's quiet emotional precision. This is fiction that finds something true in the ordinary, and it lingers long after the final page.
- Author: Sonoko Machida
- Publisher: Orion
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1398728417
- Pages: 288 pages