One thing’s for certain: You won’t have to work to enjoy this book.
In Tsumura’s English-language debut, an easy job is hard to come by.
Over the past few years, there’s been a surge of novels centered around millennial women disillusioned with the modern workplace. They’re part of a genre that’s taken the unattainable ideals of late capitalism to task with dark humor. Tsumura’s novel gingerly joins those ranks thanks to a protagonist who’s still recuperating from “burnout syndrome.” After leaving what she thought was the job she’d always wanted, the book’s narrator—a 36-year-old woman who’s left nameless—moves back in with her parents and begins to search for an “easy job.” Essentially a perma-temp, she idly floats from one uneventful gig to another—surveilling a hidden-camera feed, writing bus advertisements, punching tickets for a public park—leaving each one the moment she excels. The irony is that as much as she wants to coast through life, she can’t resist the seductive pull of its small thrills, however mundane they may be. Tsumura’s droll wit is so subtle it’s almost imperceptible. It’s the kind that challenges the reader to pay close attention to the nuances at work beneath the narrative. When strange occurrences begin to tail our hapless narrator, the book takes on an unsettling quality but also that of a cozy mystery. To say the least, it has a strange, almost calming effect, like the serenity that comes from building out a perfect spreadsheet. By the book’s end, you realize you’ve just taken a 400-page tour through the lonely world of entry-level jobs, and somehow it leaves you feeling weirdly optimistic.
One thing’s for certain: You won’t have to work to enjoy this book.Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63557-691-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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