A fab read, exploring women and the workplace, and book that should be read by all. A fabulous book with a wonderful way of showing what we think of work.

I related to this novel far too much for comfort. Hilarious and terrifying in equal measure, it'll be hard to go back to your normal life when you've finished. But it's worth it.

I loved this! I have read a few novels translated from Japanese lately and they have all struck a chord with me - a quite gentle, almost plaintive tone, where the reader is very much left to form their own opinions and take what they wish from the story.
In this one, a slight sense of suspense arises as our hero moves from one job to the next, doing very well but somehow always landing in an odd situation. While we might not all of us relate to her desire to walk away the moment life gets tough, we can relate to her desire to be the best she can be and to have the courage to say no, thank you. As time goes on, she heals and serendipity continues to play its part.

And there's no such thing as an easy way for me to say this, but I just couldn't get on with this book about a watcher/observer, and gave up after a few chapters.

I can't put my finger on it, perhaps it was the drawn out description of the watcher's routine or just not my cup of tea.

Quirky and sweet, this follows a young woman’s search for an easy job - preferably one where she barely has to think, after having suffered burnout in her previous role. She moves through a series of seemingly simple jobs, but each one comes with its own complications. She meets a whole cast of delightful characters, and there’s a thread of magical realism throughout that works beautifully.

This is a quirky book and I appreciated the overall sentiment even if I didn't agree with it. However I found the writing clumsy in parts, which meant I kept stopping and struggled to read it quickly. Once I had dedicated time to read it I enjoyed it a lot more.

A fresh, relatable and often darkly comic book about a young woman working a series of unusual short-term jobs. It was a pleasure to read, each section/job flows into the next and the minor characters are still interesting in their own ways. Really enjoyed this book!

Usually when I finish a book I know exactly how I feel about it, yet this one has left me feeling decidedly uncertain! There were aspects I really enjoyed (the various different jobs - I especially liked the first job), and some of the funny and bizarre moments through the story.

But then there were things I really didn't like, in that it felt too long, sometimes the language was very jarring (in that it a sudden turn of phrase would appear and felt quite out of place with what was happening in the story), and the final reveal of the protagonist's abandoned job, and her summation about work felt sudden and disappointing.

I somehow spent the first part of the book thinking the protagonist was male - there's no name given, and that was how the character initially felt to me, so it was a bit of a surprise when I realised it was a woman. I really liked the strange mystery of the bus adverts job - what on earth was going on with that odd lady and all the magical appearing businesses?! And as I said, it had its moments throughout. I'm glad I read it, but I'm still not entirely sure that I would recommend it, as it's such a very odd book, and I can see a lot of readers would find it a frustrating read.

I have so many contrasting opinions regarding this novel. I kept loving it, hating it, then loving it again, then hating it again, and even now, after finishing it, I do not know if I loved it or hated it more.

First of all, I hated the protagonist. We do not know what her name is, we understand along the way that she is 36, and only in the last chapter we know what the job that she left because of burnt-out was. But I could not agree with anything she would think and do. Most of all, I hated how it seemed like she was desperately seeking every time a reason to quit the job or not to renew a contract. It would bother me so much because, with all the complaints about money being short and going back living with her parents, she should have at least tried to commit to a job which would have given her a chance to solve both problems.

On the other hand, I also understand that she had had to quit her job of fourteen years after suffering burnt-out and that such a thing can be pretty disruptive of one’s life. However, even with this in mind, I could not agree with most of her choices and I would have, instead, preferred that the toxic path which had led her to burnt-out was told in more detail. It would have surely benefitted my better understanding of the character.

I also really disliked how the story was structured. Despite being written very nicely, I hated how every segment dedicated to a specific job was extremely slow at the beginning and then, when something exciting started to happening, of course it was time to change a job. It seemed that the protagonist could not bear the excitement of a job, always worried that her life would start revolving around her job, while at the same time complain how boring it was when nothing special was happening. I believe that if you find a job that you truly are passionate about, there’s nothing wrong about thinking about it outside of office hours. It was incredible how, despite keeping changing job, she would be able to immediately settle in a sort of work routine and then, when a little something would partially disrupt such routine (finishing a project, a colleague leaving, a new colleague, some hay fever), she would rather jump into an even more disruptive change, completely changing career. Working on four different jobs in twelve months and still having some time at the end of the year to take for herself, it means that she spent little more than two months on each job, which, to me, is way too little to fully grasp the aspects of a new career and decide whether to appreciate them or hate them.

This would have all been okay if there was some sort of profound moral of the story at the end. Instead, it seems like the author herself tried to find it at the end, not really succeeding. Only the very last page is dedicated to it, but I would have expected way more from an author who, from her biography, experienced something very similar to the protagonist’s story and could, therefore, have exploited her personal perspectives.

In conclusion, writing this review has made even more clear how much I hate the main character and the choices which make up her story, ruining a novel which otherwise would have had some potential.

I would like to thank Bloomsbury and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for this honest review.

Review - There’s no such thing as an easy job by Kikuko Tsumura
⭐️3/5

A young woman suffering from burnout enters an employment agency and asks for an easy job that requires no reading, no writing, and ideally no thinking. The story follows her across five different jobs, each strange and absurd in its own way.

The book is split into five parts, one for each of the jobs our protagonist is sent to by the employment agency. The jobs are all unusual and each of them seems to affect our protagonist in different ways - one job makes her paranoid, another sees her become obsessive, and a third has her questioning reality. There isn’t really a plot and it’s very slow paced - I usually like a slow read but I felt like the book could probably have been cut down by about 100 pages. The tone of the book was quite light-hearted and at times funny because of the absurdity of the situations our protagonist found herself in.

Despite the book being written in first person, we never really learn anything about our protagonist or her life outside of the jobs that she works, apart from the fact that she is burnt out from her previous job. We don’t even know her name. I have read books that use a nameless protagonist before that have worked quite well, but sadly the protagonist in this book didn’t really have a distinct enough voice to pull it off. This makes it really hard to build a picture of who she is, and as a result it is quite difficult to connect with her.

My biggest gripe with this book is that the author never engages critically the protagonists burnout or what it is about working culture that made her burnout in the first place. I wasn’t expecting the communist manifesto, but I was expecting there to be a deeper message you were supposed to take away about working and capitalism.

Despite all of this I didn’t actually dislike the book. It had a lot of promise that I don’t think it fully delivered, but it was still an easy and enjoyable read that helped me to get out of my reading slump. It is definitely flawed, but I’m loathe to give less than three stars to a book I didn’t actively dislike. So it gets a possibly generous 3/5 from me.

A 36-year-old woman suffering burn-out, seeks undemanding employment from a temping agency.

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job highlights the myriad connections we make without realising.

As we follow the narrator through five distinctive temporary assignments, we discover her idiosyncrasies and reflections all told in a breezy voice that only sometimes hits the quirky tone to which the novel appears to aspire.

I feel it is a huge risk when publishers liken a debut book/author to one better-known in the backcover blurb. If the debut doesn’t meet readers’ expectations, it is likely to result in a poor rating and review. I suspect this might be the case here.

Has a certain charm.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for the ARC.

DNF

Due to the fact that I couldn't manage to finish this book I haven't made up a clear opinion.
It just wasn't my cup of tea.

The book I didn’t know I’d been waiting for! Absolutely stunning novel, bursting with wit and also feeling. I absolutely adored There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job and will be recommending it heartily.

A quirky, different and fascinating novel which allows the reader to reflect on the choices we make and whether they are always as straightforward as we might think. I really enjoyed this book, and particularly loved all the detail about food.

There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job is a quirky, bittersweet book. It's an account of one year and five jobs, told with the kind of low-key deadpan humour that just about offsets the everyday anxieties of working life.

As someone who has changed careers and worked temp jobs, I found the story very relatable, and there were many scenarios and workplace relationships I recognised. The prose is slow-paced and bare-faced, but like many contemporary Japanese novels, there is also a hint of magical realism to keep things interesting. While the over-arching plot leaves a lot to be desired, I did enjoy the five sections as extended vignettes with a few returning characters.

There's No Such Thing... won't be everyone's cup of maté tea, but in many ways its lack of direction perfectly captures the ambivalence and futility of millennial working life.

I think the timing for this book is just right: we're in a society where people seek meaningful work over paid mundanity, and we're questioning those aspects of work that seem designed to make things more difficult than they have to be. There's No Such Thing seems to approach this in a tired, but relatively upbeat sort of way, unlike other contemporary books about work dissatisfaction, like Halle Butler's manic The New Me.

Unfortunately There's No Such Thing has the same exhausting effect as a boring job, and given I'm not contractually obliged to complete this, I DNF'd it. The dialogue was too dull and slow, even for the setting, and the translation seemed a little off, something noticed by other reviewers. Translation is not an easy job I know, but There's No Such Thing is quite direct and simple in its narrative and prose, and yet it often felt like the wrong word was used either in a way that didn't make sense or the word was quite archaic.

Such a shame.

This is such an overall fascinating book. It completely knocked everything i know about contemporary literature Out of the park and flipped everything i know about a story. It make me think deeply about myself and of the world, which all great books shall do.

Thank you to NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this book, however I’m unable to rate it, as I didn’t finish it.
This seemed to be something I’d love but I couldn’t get into the story.

I really enjoyed this novel by Kikuko Tsumura. It is written in an easy style, feeling very much narrated by the main character and giving an insight into her inner world.

The concept is fairly interesting- the main character finds herself having burnt out from work, but wants to be earning again and spend some time out of her parent's house, where she once again lives. Over the novel (set over around a year) she tries out 5 very different roles, somewhat menial but each with their own set of perks and challenges. These are a surveillance job; writing ads for a bus company; writing copy for cracker packets; putting up posters around the city and helping out in a large city park.

I've had difficulty writing the review, as could say a lot about each of the book's sections. I did, in fact, find myself talking about it with friends and family alongside reading it, which I don't often do. I enjoyed being inside the narrator's world and the novel kept me interested with it's everyday nature, but also a slight twist of magical realism to it and a plot line which is at times quirky (particularly in section 2). A sense I get through this novel is that things are not always as they seem- sometimes it is implied things can be very rationally explained, and sometimes that seems a little too easy.

At the heart most of the stories feel themed around connection, around life's everyday challenges and about human nature and its quirks. There are a host of characters encountered in each of her roles, who populate this ever changing situation.

This novel didn't leave me with a sense of learning something, but of having spent time getting to know someone and residing in their world. We learn about some of her stressors, her sensitivities, her food cravings and more. But this is very in and of her situation: recovering from burnout and facing the challenges of new roles.
My feeling mirrors, somewhat, the feelings the narrator has of her subject in the surveillance job: 'I never wanted to know everything there was to know about Yamae Yamamoto and I hadn't been under the illusion that I did, either, but I guess that somewhere in my head, I had been feeling like I had him down pretty well. Now, I discovered, there were [elements] I didn't have the faintest clue about'.

It feels well rounded and like the narrator, who we have walked with through this time of upheaval for her, is now stepping off the page back into the life she is more certain of.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book, to review.

This beguiling book has started making its way into my dreams: it's surreal and written with a deadpan humour akin to Sayaka Murata's brilliant CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN. In this novel, the unnamed narrator drifts from one job to another in search of something mindless, that she won't become completely invested in. Unfortunately, at each place of work has it's own bizarre quirks: at one job she makes adverts for shops that magical appear out of thin air, at another 'seemingly' easy job she finds herself infiltrating a sinister social club. THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN EASY JOB beautifully satirises the late capitalism obsession with workaholism and it's absurdities. It feels at once an inscrutable and oddly dream-like book, and at the same time uncannily recognisable. A propulsive, slyly funny read.