[Choralist]

I mostly agree, though ordinary retail can be hard to find because authors prefer symbolism to stocktaking.

[Choralist]

That is true, and the display window can make a novelist start posing the mannequins like…

[Choralist]

Quite so, though it still scratches the same human itch.

[Choralist]

I would disagree a little. A lot of fiction about shops becomes glamorous because the writer is secretly in love with the idea of attention and display.
That may be the real trick, and not a bad one, but it is not the same as retail.

[Choralist]

Yes, that is the bit that stays with you.

[Choralist]

What kind of retail are you after exactly, bookshop, supermarket, clothes, or something even grimmer?

[Choralist]

yes, that sounds right, and more paperwork usually means more truth somehow

[Choralist]

Have you read Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata?

It is certainly not an ordinary realist account in every respect, but the routines of the shop and the social expectations around the work are taken seriously. I liked that the job was not merely scenery for a more glamorous life.

[Choralist]

Have you tried 84, Charing Cross Road. It is not ordinary retail, of course, but it does have that dry business of selling and buying in small human doses.
Still, I suspect you want something less wistful and more fluorescent, which is a very respectable taste.

[Choralist]

Exactly, the broken card reader has better character development than some protagonists.

[Choralist]

Yes, the till is rarely glamorous, despite its best efforts.

[Choralist]

Right, and I’d add one thing. I don’t know enough to lead conversations there, but I would follow them. Keeping it specifically classical would help; otherwise it becomes a general India-and-music bucket.

[Choralist]

Count me as one of the five.

[Choralist]

I hope we keep the slightly untidy quality of a real community. The best conversations rarely remain obediently inside their original subject.

[Choralist]

Michael and Elsa deserve more than moral support, I suspect. At minimum, first choice of chairs.

[Author]

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