There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

Gift chosen by neice. Presume good.

The book came a little bit dusty, but apart from that all was OK.

This felt like an endless loop with nothing to break the odd tedium. Some specifically Japanese details are interesting, but not enough to carry the “stories” of each job and hold my interest.

Not sure I read the same book as all the critics that are falling all over themselves praising this book. It’s a good, fun read but not a great work of literature. The protagonist is a 32-year-old female who takes a series of entry-level jobs with no ambition to do anything more than “make some cash to pay the bills and hopefully obtain health insurance not too far from her house”. The jobs start out normal enough, but quickly veer off into a weird dimension where our heroine begins assuming the characteristics of other people, distorts reality by recording advertisements, becomes the target of a cult and competes for her job with a fictional character from a rice-cracker package who comes to life and shows up in her office. Each chapter is self-contained and has nothing really to do with any of the other stories but the book doesn’t feel disjointed - as a whole it has cohesion and the final chapter gives some insight into why our heroine launched on her quest for the perfect job - she apparently became (understandably) burned out with her original career and re-found her inspiration to resume her life’s calling after solving a mystery and discovering a secret involving a missing man, a bewildering city park, the ghost of a caveman and rabid soccer fans. The book as a whole is enjoyable and would probably make a better movie because at 400 pages, the book is about 100 pages too long. There is a lot of repetition and a couple of the stories drag on for way too long but each chapter is unique and different and it's easy to keep reading just to follow the adventures of this likeable heroine. It’s a fine introduction to modern Japanese fiction for anyone with an interest in the genre.

Not a quick read but well worth the investment of your time. Good story, interesting inner dialogue and lyrical prose. What more can you ask? Loved it!