I had been in a reading slump for weeks when I picked up this book and it hooked me from the first page. A funny, insightful, and ultimately hopeful look into the world of work and its myriad challenges.

I really enjoyed this novel, looking at a burnt out Japanese millennial who is seeking 'an easy job'. We follow her through her employment at a variety of unusual, simple jobs, such as putting up posters, manning of park hut and writing entertaining trivia on rice cracker packets. I found the main character a little difficult to sympathise with, but this was nonetheless a very entertaining read, suitable for fans of Convenience Store Woman.

Firstly, huge thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook and a print copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. 

As soon as I saw this novel pop up on my Twitter I knew I just had to read it, whether it be an ARC or a bought copy I just had to have it. Not only does it help me on my quest to read as many Japanese novels as possible, but it also covers the subject of work burnout which is something that hits close to home for me. 

There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job follows the life of a thirty-six year old woman who is returning to work after taking a year off after suffering from severe burnout from her last job. Her only request of the agency is that she be given an easy job, preferably a desk job that requires little to no thought or responsibility. From monitoring a reclusive author through surveillance tapes to writing bus adverts for businesses that keep mysteriously appearing and disappearing, our protagonist discovers that there may not be such a thing as an easy job and that burnout can happen in any profession… 

The entire novel is from the perspective of our mysterious unnamed protagonist. I didn’t notice for a while that she didn’t even have a name as I was just so absorbed in her narrative that I just didn’t realise. Looking back I really like the decision not to give much of a name or background to the character as it easily allows the reader to slot themselves into her life. I mean, how many of us have wished for an easy, no stress, job? At first you may think of the protagonist for being a little childish in her request but as the novel progresses, you begin to understand where she is coming from and witness how easily she finds herself giving her all to a job, even if it is temporary. As the novel features several different locations, we also meet a whole cast of interesting characters which made each job even more unique and, in some cases, mysterious. 

I really liked how the novel was split into parts and how each part focused on a different job, despite each part having a separate focus the novel didn’t feel disjointed in any way. I enjoyed how each job was seemingly random and some being jobs that I would have never have thought of before. Some of the jobs even had elements of magic realism or mystery to it, some I could figure out or theorise and some that left me wishing that we were provided with answers. However, I understand that this is entirely dependent on the reader and some people will love the lack of explanation offered in some parts. As the novel progresses we learn a little more about the protagonist and I loved how it wasn’t until the end of the novel where we get the answer to a question that I was asking throughout the book!

As you can tell I really enjoyed this book and thought it was great! It effortlessly captures how disillusioned you can get with work regardless of the job and how something that you may enjoy at first can quickly become a source of stress, and even paranoia. I love Tsumura’s writing style and thought the translation from Polly Barton still captured Tsumura’s unique voice and I would love for more of her work to be translated into English in the future.

Be sure to check this novel out when it is published tomorrow, 26 November 2020!

A humorous novel that is quirky, charming and yet poignant.
Emotionally drained by her job, our protagonist, a young Japanese woman walks into an employment agency looking for a job that is close to home and requires little thinking. The novel is like a series of connected short stories as over the coming months the woman is employed in a number of different jobs.  The employment agency find her jobs which, at the start fulfil her criteria, but soon take on more meaning as problems arise and our narrator becomes more involved with her work colleagues and the problems that need to be overcome. Each of the jobs offers intrigue and magic and turn out to be far from the mundane job she had hoped for as we find that every job has meaning and purpose.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book finding it charming and refreshing with it’s plethora of quirky characters.

This was a fascinating and interesting read and i really liked Tsumura's voice as a writer. The way the story was told was done well and i liked that it showed a variety of jobs and how she responded to them. The other characters were interesting but there were a couple of times i got them mixed up with other characters. The section i found the most fascinating was the portion about the job in the forest. I would read more by this author as this was an excellent and interesting read.

This book has stayed with me after reading; giving much food for thought and sparking interesting conversations with others. Our narrator has burned out from her career and takes on several temporary jobs over the course of a year. She is guided by a recruitment advisor who tries to find her jobs that completely match her requests, and in doing so she learns about herself, from what she needs from a job and what it actually proves to be. Each new job offers her insights into herself, her skills and preferences and over the year she recovers from her burn out and gains new friends. There is a supernatural quirky quality to this story, more prominent in some jobs than others, which I enjoyed. I have read of this being compared to Convenience Store Woman, and whilst it shares the self realisation aspect of that novel I would also suggest this would appeal to fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

I can’t believe this took me over a week to get through. For some reason I found reading it in large chunks hard, so I dipped in little and often. The topic is super interesting to me, and I love to hear different opinions and experiences with work life balance and a happy life.  I feel I loved and disliked it all that the same time.

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura is a quirky Japanese novel about a 36-year-old unmarried woman who has suffered burnout from her stressful job and has gone back home to live with her parents.  She visits an employment bureau, looking for the most undemanding job possible so that she can recover and rebuild herself.

During the course of the novel, she works in several different jobs, meeting various interesting characters and learning more about herself and what she needs in employment and in life. Each of the jobs appears easy on the surface, but has its own challenges.

I enjoyed the book very much and found it quick and easy to read.  I’d like to read more from this author, so I hope that more of her work is translated into English.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

This is a strange and darkly funny story of a woman's search for an easy, mindless job having just left a stressful 14-year career. Each section sees the protagonist meeting with her recruiter/advisor as she is pitched the next seemingly simple job. 

I found the jobs fascinating - particularly the first role she's in - and I think what I took away from it was that no matter what industry or area of work someone is in, and no matter how simple the job, there are always layers that feed in to the overall experience. There's the task at hand (whether that is surveillance, writing ads or putting up posters), and then there are the colleagues adding one layer, the consumer another, the commute, the office, the emotional engagement and in our narrators case, the burnout that can come with this emotional involvement. 

She's extremely likeable, although makes frustrating decisions at times, and I found myself urging her to unveil more about her personal life. She's 36 and living with her parents, and we know very little else. But wanting to know more about her kept me turning the pages, and perhaps alludes to the idea that we often only know one side to our colleagues. We can sometimes only know their work personas and very little else about their private lives. 

I absolutely loved the concept, but did feel that sometimes the pacing of the writing was off and could have been cut in some places and developed further in others, but this was perhaps in part down to the translation so it's still five stars from me.

This book just made me frustrated. After I found a delightful gem in 'Convenience Store Woman', I kind of hoped for a bit of the same from this book. And though there were moments I did really enjoy - they have the same quirk and depth to them as Sayaka Murata's book does - ultimately, I felt its length hindered it. I had expected it to be 200 pages or so, but it was double that. Sadly, this was a bit of a bust for me.

I didn't expect to enjoy this book so much! The story is pretty innovative as it follows a Japanese woman making her way through a world of short-term agency jobs.  The story is quite slow-paced and doesn't follow a real 'plot', which may repel some readers, yet it was exactly what I needed this season. The main character is extremely realistic and relatable in today's society.

It's a very odd novel, hence it's extremely difficult to say if you are the person who will enjoy it. Yet if you have a few evenings off and are looking to relax I would recommend at least try it!

A delightful and witty book. The protagonist burns out from her regular job and decides to try new unconventional jobs, "easy" jobs. It turns out, however, that every job is difficult in some sense. That's work in modern life for you.

I really enjoyed the quirkiness of each role, There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job is a hilarious but mesmerising reading. Everyone could empathise with the protagonist's frustration with this century's work life.

I didn't finish this book because the story and characters didn't grab me. There were some moments that piqued my interest, such as the store that nearly closed down when the advert didn't go out. However, I felt that the story rambled on a bit too much and became quite monotonous. I did empathise with the main character though, with regards to her not knowing what exactly she wanted to do in life.

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job is my first read by Japanese author Kikuko Tsumura and what a deadpan delight it was! In it, our narrator has hit the wall on a job she’s had for years, so she decides to try shorter-term contracts at ‘easier’ jobs, for the good of her mental health. While these jobs do certainly seem easy on paper, it turns out that there is always more to them than meets the eye.

The story is split into four sections, each about a new job. Maybe all are considered easy and dull in Japan, but they really intrigued me. The first: surveillance, watching people on screens for hours and noting their movements. She is assigned to watch a writer who is accidentally hiding contraband in his apartment.

When she becomes weirdly obsessed and jealous of him, she knows it’s time to bow out of that role. I was totally engrossed in every detail of this little vignette, loved it. Also, through each job, we learn more about our narrator’s wonderfully deadpan take on life:

"But just for that moment, I wanted permission to crank my unhappiness gauge to the max. I’d dial it back down, I promised to dial it back down right away. By the day after tomorrow at the latest."

She moves on from there to another great job: writing the scripts for bus advertising. This is actually a genius idea – bus adverts play at the stops where you can get off and see / buy from whatever has just been advertised. I haven’t seen anything so specific on transport adverting here (the UK). They are missing a trick.

Due to both the lyrical writing and more being revealed about our narrator’s offbeat (yet often highly relatable) reactions to what’s happening in her life, I was fascinated by this little story too.

She also ends up writing facts on the back of cracker packets and having an adventure in a forest. Quite the collection of jobs, wouldn’t you agree?

I’ve never read a book around the theme of job-hopping before and loved how it took what could be a mundane topic and made it a glorious sideways look at the everyday. It was also refreshing to read about a character that wasn’t ambitious in the traditional sense. It seems that all you ever hear about is ‘climbing that career ladder’ and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job is actually a celebration of doing the exact opposite.

I really enjoyed this unique take of the grinds of daily work. If you’re in the mood for something different and deadpan, give There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job a read. Our narrator ends up getting far more than she bargained for out of each of her roles and is definitely a poster-girl for not staying in a job if it’s grinding you down. Can you relate?

I found this quite a frustrating book, parts of it were very slow and others, like the ending seemed to be almost too rapid. I didn't feel I knew much more about the main character by the end and, although I'm sure being a translator is very difficult, I've read a lot of books when I forget they've been translated but sadly not this one which I found quite jarring at times. 
Thank you to netgalley and Bloomsbury publishing for an advance copy of this book

In ‘There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job’ we meet our unnamed, thirty something, burnt out narrator as she starts her first ‘seemingly’ easy job with a video surveillance company. 

Through an extremely honest and candid narrative where she speaks to us, the readers, in first person, we slowly discover her story and how, having reached burn out, she has left her highly demanding job to look for a role that is …. Just Easy, Just No trouble at all. But is there such a thing as an easy job? 

If you have read Murakami, you will easily notice a very Murakami feel to the book – magical, ethereal and thought provoking. 

The overall pace of the book is gentle, but underneath it all lies a subliminal message about finding true satisfaction in the work we do; true, honest satisfaction. 

As the protagonist moves from the surveillance job to a postering job to a job writing content for crackers, there were so many instances where I could draw parallels to my own life – like when our narrator shies away and doesn’t take very well to praise and where she just wants to stay invisible, in the background and just do her job. 

An easy read, but definitely not a flippant story, Kikuko Tsumura has written a masterpiece that should be a must read for everyone struggling to find that fabled work life balance. 

Final Words: I came away from reading this book, feeling healed and rejuvenated. A big thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC.

There was something oddly compelling about this book. The translations as a little off but because each chapter/ job was o entertaining it was easily overlooked. I think the dodgy translation will put some people off which is a shame.

3,5 stars
Overall a pretty okay read about a woman in her mid-thirties who has just had a burnout and is looking for an easy job. What stood out though (and which I found a bit annoying at times) was that all jobs she has all are far more interesting than they at first seem to be and that she is so damn good at all of them. 
Thank you Macmillan and Netgalley for the ARC.

Such a lovely book. It does take a while to get going and doesn't have a fast storyline or linear plot, so I can see why many western readers perhaps struggled. Well worth sticking past the first job though.

The author has quit her job due to burnout and is looking for an easy job, something she can do without much stress or thought. She then tries a series of jobs with various results and incidents. I won't give anything away but a lot of bizarre things and interesting characters. The lessons are subtle at times.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for a copy of this translated works. 

I adored this book. 

This is a <i>strange, compelling, darkly funny tale of one woman’s search for meaning in the modern workplace</i>

We follow our main character as she bounces around 'easy' jobs she is allocated through an agency as a temp. The jobs allocated to her are all so random and different from each other. Her life experiences through the roles adds to her development, and she takes skills and knowledge, and behaviours, and friendships, through to the subsequent roles. 
It's a story of human connection, and finding yourself. 

I loved it.