I find it quite exceptional and intriguing-- learning about one's ups and downs, of meeting new circle of friends, new environment and challenge, to bear a sudden burden and annoyance from working and to learn that nothing in this world as easy as we wish it to be. A very contemporary and relatable, kind of love the variety of jobs. Also I love the way each having own problems and thrilling encounters-- the dvd scene and the author's personalities, of finding out the suddenly appearing and disappearing shops, collecting idea on trivia, that scam group of Lonely No More! and bewildering incident at the hut. Though it is a novel, it does have a short story feel because of the structure. Each section of the book covers one job, and each one introduces us to a new cast of characters for our lead to interact with. I honestly was really enjoying this from the start. I found the first job interesting, the second a delightful bit of possible magical realism, the third extremely entertaining and the fourth darkly fascinating. I was about ready to give it four or possibly even five stars as I was just enjoying it all around. Then the final job hit and had it been a short story collection I would have given that section one… maybe two stars if I was being generous. I didn't find the cast of that section interesting (in contrast I loved most of the characters we were introduced to in the other jobs), I found the main focus of the job tedious, the mystery aspect boring and the end a bit on the preachy side. In this, Tsumura’s story resists the economic determinism of the American office novel, which tends to draw attention to the deadening employment ecosystem its characters are a part of. Colleagues and bosses range from indifferent to mean to abusive, and co-worker friendships are typically predicated on mutual suffering. One of the pleasures of reading Tsumura is her focus, instead, on the care in ostensibly meaningless jobs. She treats boring, unextraordinary people in boring, unextraordinary jobs with an enchantment that many contemporary novels about work seem to actively avoid.

Quietly hilarious and deeply attuned to the uncanny rhythms and deadpan absurdity of the daily grind' - Sharlene Teo Kikuko Tsumura’s novel There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job explores the same issue very differently. (Originally published in Japan in 2015, it has now been translated into English by Polly Barton.) The 36-year-old unnamed narrator, who has left her job of 10 years because of what she calls “burnout syndrome,” shows up at a temp agency and tells her recruiter that she is not interested in a meaningful job; she just wants an easy one.

About the contributors

On the surface, the jobs that the protagonist found herself in seemed easy. They promised to be routinary, hence, the protagonist can emotionally disconnect from the work she was performing. Her old job left her emotionally drained. However, things were never meant to be. As she would soon realize, each job had its own set of challenges. There were also jobs that can be emotionally demanding. There were realities she cannot seem to escape from. The more she stayed, the more she found herself emotionally invested. She found herself absorbed by her job, her workmates, and the intricacies of workplace politics. Rather than apathy, she cared for her job and the people she worked with. As the book’s title echoed, there is no such thing as an easy job. Kikuko Tsumara “experienced workplace harassment in her first job out of college, and quit after 10 months to retrain and find another position, an experience that inspired her to write stories about young writers.” Tsumura has also written a score of short stories. Her 2013short story Kyūsuitō to kame ( The Water Tower and the Turtle) won the 39th Kawabata Yasunari Prize. It was also her first work to be translated into English and it won her a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. In 2016, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology recognized her works by awarding her a New Artist award. Despite its blunders, There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job did a laudable job of capturing the intricacies of the modern workplace. It grappled with several concerns such as workplace politics, discrimination, underemployment, and the romanticization of overwork. The episodic novel captured the universal workplace experience through the gaze of an unnamed narrator. Tsumura vividly portrayed highly relatable situations, both inside and outside of the workplace. Hovering above all of these concerns are the influences of capitalism. The novel had local flavors but it resonated on a universal scale. While not perfect, There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job, as Tsumura’s first English-translate novel, sufficed as a primer for her prose.

Job 4: Puts up posters in neighborhoods and finds out she’s in competition with a company that puts up posters for their scam project of ripping old lonely people off.I loved the narrator almost instantly. Her dry, deadpan humour was hilarious to me. Another thing I liked was the messy, expressive way she describes feelings: But that also means any kind of meaningful job goes with it. Or does it? She comes close, more than once, to a job that isn’t stressful, that she enjoys, and that offers some sense of personal satisfaction.

She has won the Akutagawa Prize and the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and her first short story translated into English, ‘The Water Tower and the Turtle’, won a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. https://granta.com/the-water-tower-an... (Granta Issue 148, Online Version, 9/2/2019) Polly Barton’s engaging and readable translation makes sufficient use of Britishisms—”bloody”, “moreish” for “tasty”, “skive off” for “to skip work”—to briefly draw the reader out of a Japanese life and into an incongruously British one. A woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking. The translation is unusual: where most translated literature opts for a sort of neutral English, in this case it's very clear that it's been translated by a British English speaker, and there are lots of Britishisms in the text. I will say that don't think it will work for everyone. But once I'd adjusted to it, I really appreciated it. Because it's consistent, it creates a very distinct identity for the narrator and for the novel.Our heroine is a thirty-six-year-old woman with burnout who repeatedly goes to the same employment agency over the course of the novel to request more jobs. She wants something close to home with no reading or writing involved and, ideally, very little thinking.