Reviews

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

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saprat's review against another edition

funny lighthearted reflective slow-paced

3.0

minor spoilers
if there's one thing i HIGHLY admire about this book, it's the UTTER dedication to the bit. this book is largely about burnout and monotonous mundanity, and not once does the book ever stray from this. it is absolutely impressive how commonplace and ordinary every single event in this novel is. despite how utterly uneventful this novel was, i was almost captivated by it: the utter Lack was genuinely sort of mesmerizing. this Lack throughout the book is obviously on purpose: the whole Point was to reflect the everyday tedium of life as a working person, and oh man it seriously achieved it. the entire book very genuinely felt like listening to a real-life person telling me about their normal ass week. in each short story, we watch the main character pick out and obsess over the absolute smallest things; in the first one, she obsesses over a grocery snack, in the next, she obsesses over new establishments popping up that she's never noticed before. we're obviously supposed to assume that her deciding to care about these really small things is how she's coping with monotonous life, and jfc i'll be honest, it hit scarily close to home. at the end of the book, the main character doesn't particularly experience any big revelations, and we're not presented with any sort of meaningful message besides a few little sentences, but that sort of feels like the most fitting ending; no big climax, just a total average life until the end. this was even boring at parts, but boring in a way i found somehow fascinating, knowing that this book was meant to be boring on purpose. some strange things do happen during her various jobs: in her second job, where she's tasked with writing ads that will play on public transit, she notices that writing an ad for a certain establishment will suddenly make the establishment appear out of nowhere, and that deleting the ad when she's at work will cause the establishment to suddenly disappear. it suddenly seems like she's able to create and delete entire establishments by writing and deleting ads, but i interpreted this as her simply not noticing these establishments before, and trying to come up with a whimsical explanation to motivate herself through the day.
but i'll admit that the first job we're introduced to in the book makes NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL. she's fucking hired to watch this fucking random ass guy on secret security cameras all day??? this isn't explained at all????? literally a totally batshit thing, especially since all the other jobs explored in the novel are relatively normal, real jobs. and yet somehow, even with this insane job, the novel STILL succeeds at portraying it as utterly boring and uneventful. it's honestly mindblowing how little happens throughout this book. it's delightful.
this book is just SUCH an interesting little book to me. i don't think it's the best book ever, and i don't think i'll ever reread it, but i can definitely say i didn't regret my experience with this.

dembury's review

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3.0

The strongest parts of this book were the strange little veins of the supernatural running through the story, as well as the main character, who was quite relatable and fun to watch as she went about trying to find a job that fit well for her. The flip side is that the narrative absolutely begins to DRAGGG the entire middle section and a fair chunk of the end. Even when the ending portion picks up it’s kind of all held back by hinging pretty significantly on a fictional football player whose story is tricky to follow. Overall, the story starts out engaging and well-paced before the third job begins and things start slowing down and being repetitive. I would be entertained for a few pages and then downright bored, so it falls right in the middle for me.