There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by

Paperback, 300 pages

Published April 20, 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing.

ISBN:
978-1-5266-2224-2
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4 stars (8 reviews)

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.

She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?

As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but …

4 editions

reviewed There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura

Not everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but it was mine!

4 stars

Follows the narrator through five short-term contract jobs, specifically chosen to be undemanding after she quit her career through burnout. Apart from the stories being genuinely quite charming, I think they also offer an interesting reflection of the nature of our relationship with work and with colleagues. The writing style felt somehow a little flat, though I thought that could be read as portraying the narrator's likely mood. Anyway, I really enjoyed it and I'm only sorry there don't seem to be any more of the author's books available in English.

reviewed There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura

Review of "There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I'm on a mission to DNF or read the oldest books on my TBR - meaning the books that have been on my TBR the longest. I've DNFed a couple, and maybe should've DNFed this one, but it was okay in the end.

I found the first half more engaging than the second half, I think because the "point" such as it is had been made. You follow a nameless young woman who has just quit her job after suffering intense burnout. She tries out four new jobs over the course of this book, all supposedly "easy." Each one becomes more than she bargained for, either because of the work itself or her own attitude toward the work. It's clear she struggles not to get too invested, no matter how simple the job seems on the surface.

If the book had upped the pace, I'd have given it 4 stars. …

reviewed There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura

Review of "There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job" on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

The unnamed protagonist’s struggles with burnout, and yet her urges to self-sabotage by forming just the types of connections and doing just the kind of over-work that got her here in the first place… extremely relatable. And there are so many detailed descriptions of delicious food… 

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