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

There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job Overview

In Kikuko Tsumura's There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, after suffering a burnout from her last job, the first person narrator takes a new job at a surveillance agency. Ideally, she wants work that requires almost nothing of her. As soon as she becomes invested in watching the daily activities of her surveillance target, the narrator becomes terrified of becoming emotionally involved and quits. Over the following months, she moves from job to job, perpetually unsatisfied. As the narrator encounters an accruing number of unpredictabilities and mysteries in her vocational spheres, she must ask herself what she is trying to escape and for what she is searching. The novel explores themes including fear and avoidance, meaning and purpose, and detachment and investment.