An expert convenience store worker and Robert D. Hare-level psychopath and possible ace or aro (asexual or aromatic) adopts a pet rat—actually a men’s rights activist/incel type—to reduce people’s discomfort with her lifestyle, which apparently everyone around her in 2016 Japan condemns for failing to include either a full-time job or a family.

This is the setup used to criticize a common habit of society. If people can’t tell some linear combination of socially-common eigenstories about you, they often question the evidence their eyes present them with: even if you’re the perfect worker, the model worker in every way, but you don’t have a respectable life story, you might never be recognized as a valuable colleague or employee or person. Even if you, like the narrator, win over your new bosses and coworkers by being exceptionally skilled and dedicated to your craft, any hint of conventional respectability (full-time job or family) rewires their attitude towards you as they automatically extrapolate stories about you. Professionals stop being professionals and start being stupid men and women eager to help you along your way towards a respectable life (remember: a job or a family).

The book is helping me stop attributing people’s foibles to one deeper character flaw so readily. Yes, often a set of often-paired life problems has one common root cause, but unless I’m going to get all scientific about it, it’s better just to take the diversity of unrespectabilities as-is, and strive to see the person rather than the role they or I think they should play.