Cassie McCullough

And so she manages to complicate everything just by her mere presence.

Or is it that everything is interesting if you really closely observe?

Did you find yourself thinking along those lines?

Yeah, I stopped on that point too, Yumiko, because it reminded me of an interview I did many years ago with an old sea captain.

And he said in the interview, there are

Great crews and bad food, and there's great food and bad crews.

You never get both, but I'd take a great crew any day, he said.

And even though sometimes the interactions are very slight and seemingly trivial, she is thinking about that person and learning from them and trying to divine bits of intelligence from things.

And that's kind of lovely.

And I guess Yumiko is the opposite of some of the toxic stuff that you've experienced.

Yeah, and I feel the same way.

I think this is a deceptively profound book because it is so sort of seemingly light and gentle and things are of insignificance.

But you find yourself asking, you know, what is insignificance?

There's meaning in everything and there's things to be learned.

And mostly that point you were making too, Richard, the gentleness and kindness of some of the interactions with the colleagues were so valuable to her, even if she barely knew what they were giving her.

Yeah, you mustn't, if you pick this book up, you mustn't go and read the last page first.

But when you get there, it is very, it is quite a full stop.

Oh, that's fantastic.

This is the Monthly Book Club on ABC Radio National, where we're talking about two books about work.

The Japanese novel, There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job, which we've just heard about.