Where does Motoya find lines like When I woke up and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face had finally begun to forget who I was? Motoya likes her fiction to swerve, not drift or meander, and she doesnt have patience for wandering. The other persons ideas, interests, andhabits would gradually take the place of my own. He currently lives in Washington, DC. Youknow, I think pears might be my favorite fruit, he announced. Uwano recommended this game, my husband said at last. Maybe I should have gone for that one too, I said enviously,looking into Hakones bento box as I took the rubber band off my own. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya / Soft Skull Press / 224 pages / 978-1593766788 / 2018. She becomes the bulge in the curtain, the shadow on the other side of the glassthe strange one. He's a founding member of Literary Starbucks (2016) and a recovering poetry editor with a chronic crush on nouns that get used as adjectives. Her first story, ""Eriko to zettai,"" appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. . Any reader pursuing concrete examples of nimble writing and unconventional resolutions could do a hell of a lot worse than Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a collection of short stories that mangle and deform the familiar until it becomes something both wildly unexpected and deeply welcome. I fled from thetinkling of coins falling and the suckling sound of him chewingon dried squid. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Its when Motoya is on the rocky terrain of collapsing relationships that her strangeness finds the friction it needs to stick." The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. When the pair suffers their first fight, Tomokos husband collapseshis straw limbs crumble at her feetand she fantasizes about setting him on fire. 224 pp. Each of these titles represents an energizing alternative to the ripped-apart illogic of our contemporary reality. Its saddermore bruisingthan a revenge fantasy. Why was I so happy to be married to a bunch of straw?, she wonders to herself, before finally reassembling him. At their very heart, however, are everyday struggles that are not only typical in contemporary Japanese society, but identifiable around the world" -. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. In Fitting Room, a saleswoman attends day and night to a mysterious customer who refuses to leave a fitting room. Her books have . Soft Skull Press. These stories are pointed, possessed by a defiant and often violent spirit. By now, I was like the ghost of a snakethat had already been eaten up by many other snakes, and Id lostmy own body long before getting swallowed up by my husband. The unpredictable narratives pair with curious and compelling imagery to create a palpable and inexplicable sense of wonder. The Kenyon Review is supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. No one in Yukiko Motoyas new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. The Lake Hamana eel was firmer and more succulent than the one from the Mikawa region. Sharlene Teos Ponti recently tracked the codependent relationship between two teens, while Neel Patels If You See Me, Dont Say Hi was a collection of short stories that doubled as a study of longing. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. Translated by Asa Yoneda. Idplanned to just wait for her, but I saw a banner for the SpecialSelection Four-Eel Taste Test Bento and was tempted into gettingone. Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and in the conjuring up of outsized brutalities. Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. Q&A, which is presented as the deathbed ravings of a beauty columnist, is a meta delirium of tips, callbacks to previous stories, and rage. [21] Nilanjana Roy, in her review for the Financial Times, concluded that "Yukiko Motoyas shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you". In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. On Deluge by Leila Chatti, Anne Graue I think thats the image I have of marriagethat both me and the other person, as we are now, will disappear before we can do anything about it. The following is from Yukiko Motoya's collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder. On Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir by Natasha Trethewey, John Wall Barger Arent you going to have any? the husband-like thing said. In I Called You by Name, a woman in a business meeting is plagued by the certainty that only she can see a figure lurking in the shadows. We used to sing this song all the time. No, its not like that. Poems That Linger: Peter Campions One Summer Evening at the Falls, Johannes Gransson John Scioli, the owner of the Community Bookstore, in Brooklyn, prepares to shutter a neighborhood institution. 224 pp. collects eleven stories -- though one, the Akutagawa Prize-winning novella, 'An Exotic Marriage', is considerably longer than the rest, taking up more than a third of the book by itself. In The Women, a man is forced to kill his own fantasies after they come to life and challenge him to a duel. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya (2018). San isnt the only woman in Motoyas stories who feels neglected and vaguely undefined. Didnt you say his ex-wife wasreally good-looking?, Really good-looking. The zelkovas planted in a clump justbeyond the railing were overgrown with green leaves that lookedlike a neglected hairdo. Instead of responding, I looked down and nibbled a slice of pear. and then the short story "The Exotic Marriage" is a whopping eighty five pages long. . . Characters change; literally, their facial features move, morph, disappear. The ride can be anxious but never dull. In the realms of Motoya, believable behavior is more destructive and upsetting than any surreal occurrence. Why dont you try a different game? Id ask, but hedonly say, I like this one.. In the darkness, my husband swiftly removed my pajama bottoms. The other stories are trim and propulsive, itching to move forward, using their surreal elements to interrogate assumptions about intimacy and the complacency of partnership. These stories, tinged with magical elements, see characters toeing the line between independence and isolation: A teardrop of blood or a shape-shifting rock can unmask deep-seated realities that theyre tempted to ignore in favor of unfulfilling marriages and quotidian chores. I guessed hemust be feeling needy. I finished towel-dryingmy hair and stepped out onto the balcony to bring in the laundryId hung out that afternoon. "In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar . On Asylum by Jill Bialosky, Jehanne Dubrow Motoya won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary prize, for AN EXOTIC MARRIAGE, the novella contained in THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER; this book offers the exciting opportunity to introduce Motoya to a U.S. audience. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Motoya sets a scene involving several hundred couples engaged in a melee defying all imagining by inventorying the screams, the clash of weapons, men begging for their lives from lovers who seemed beyond language, belated confessions of love The story concludes in a tragedy, but its later reversed by a single line in a different story. For the first time in months, his hand crept into my bed, undermy comforter. A draft blows through the talesloneliness, the most spectral emotion. [19] It included a new translation of Irui konin tan under the title "An Exotic Marriage". Take whatever form you want to be! The distending body of my husband exploded with a loud pop. I thought. Never is the ennui of these men treated as anything more than a product of their privilege and their twisted expectations of the people around themwhich rescues much of the collection from a dive into the dour and dismal. Banners positioned around the floor advertised the Beat the Heat Bento Expo. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. [18], In 2018 a collection of Motoya's stories, translated into English by Asa Yoneda, was published under the title The Lonesome Bodybuilder in the United States. But I guess that cant be right. The fact that I couldnt stop, even if I tried, was proof that it wasnt actually a matter of anything as benign as acting or pretending.. Winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, Picnic in the Storm is the English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearless young writers. "An Exotic Marriage," a Kafkaesque depiction that shows how even those closest to us can wind up completely alien in the end, a disturbing sentiment that is also reflected in the final story, "The Straw Husband." There is a bit of twisted, violent dystopia in "Paprika Jiro" and anime-flavored . . "You should be careful," her . The protagonist in the title story grows fond of combat sports and wonders why this didnt occur much earlier. 209 pages. Maybe someone told it tome, a long time ago. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . Number of pages: 224. By Yukiko Motoya. . But Id like us to stay as separate people for a little longer., I mean, getting married, that means swallowing everything about the other person, the good things and the bad. But I guess that cant be right. Their tone is light and good-natured, but they mean to modify by force the received notions of relationships and their default mode of subjugated women. When I sat down next to him, the husband-like thing pickedup the TV remote and started flipping through channels. The 11 short stories in this collection, translated by Asa Yoneda, range in tone from ominous thrillers to lighthearted folktales, but they always seem to return to a depletion of self. Yukiko Motoya ( , Motoya Yukiko, born July 14, 1979) is a Japanese novelist, playwright, theatre director, and former voice actress.She has won numerous Japanese literary and dramatic awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, and the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award. 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