Arent you worried? and then the short story "The Exotic Marriage" is a whopping eighty five pages long. For instance, in Fitting Room, a boutique employee, faced with a customer who wont leave the changing room, remembers that the fitting rooms were moveable, on wheels. Motoya wastes no time: the employee wheels the fitting room and customer out of the shop. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . There is something pareidolic about the writing process. He seemed to be enjoying eating me up so much that the sensation of it spread to me, and I felt as though I were tasting my own self. Here, take it.. 224 pp. As the strangeness mounts, San observes her identity as something willed and imposed. My husband looked up from the iPad for the first time in awhile, and what I saw nearly made me shriek and run from theroom. The author reaches, with language, toward a reader who may or may not be there. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Many unusual things happen in The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a new collection by the Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. How had I ended up married to a completely different species of being from me? San wonders to herself, before her features begin to mutate too. Take whatever form you want to be! The distending body of my husband exploded with a loud pop. The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. Motoyas collection is a bold broadcast: fiction should be wild and daring, and less beholden to the rigors of logic than to the power and potency of surprise. Id brought her to the store, promising to buy her something new to wear, or anything else she wanted, but Hakone had headed straight for the escalator down to the basement food hall and asked for a bento. 224 pp. A married couple begin to look like each other, and the wife wonders how she can prevent it. He pulled the strip of squid from his mouth, and said, Itsbecause youre a housewife, San. One night, after dinner, I was surprised to notice my husband engrossedin his iPad rather than the variety show playing on the TV. Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. Lingerie? Back to the gym she goes. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. 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. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. A pulsing sense of anxiety pushes the story forward as readers are left to reconcile her male staffs tepid ignorance with her panicked interior monologue. Motoya was born in snowy Ishikawa Prefecture on the Sea of Japan but later set out for Tokyo, where she completed an acting course and worked as a voice actor for a spell before deciding to zero in on writing novels and plays. Yukiko Motoya ( , Motoya Yukiko, born July 14, 1979) is a Japanese novelist, playwright, theatre director, and former voice actress. by Fun and funny . Ikiteru dake de ai was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize,[9] and was later adapted into a 2018 film of the same name. Its remarkable ending urges one to reexamine the mysteries of the story: the uncanny dogs, the fine-drawn snowbound setting, the temporal ellipsesall those details that seem to delicately conceal the protagonists frayed psychology. [24] In 2009 her play Shiawase saiko arigat maji de, about a woman who enters a couple's home and declares that she is the husband's mistress, won the 53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award. And like so many arbitrary signifiers of taste, style, or quality, they are focused exclusively on a western tradition. In The Women, the eponymous characters are transformed into blood-thirsty warriors through the escalating fantasies of their partners. Motoya locates a venerable sense of ancestry and inherited duty in the storys young market trader. Theyhad a feature on department store deli eats, and the Spicy FilletSteak Summer Set Bento just looked so delicious, she said, flattening her plump eyelids in anticipation. The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker Number of pages: 224. Like the work of Aimee Bender and Robert Walser, many of these stories, however whimsical on the surface, possess a sense of dread at their core. On A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill, Nicholas Bredie After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Motoya wards off fatigue by peppering this buffet of patriarchal cruelty with humorsurprising enough and sharp enough to elicit as many belly laughs as grimaces while reading. In The Lonesome Bodybuilder, the pest is always a yawning disconnect between people. To Motoya, complacency is not only a violation of selfhood but also of fiction. . Youre talking about him a lot lately., Thats exactly what I told Uwano. Let the cat do it. "That Morning, When It", trans. No one in Yukiko Motoya's new story collection, . In the title story, a husband watches a boxing match and asks his wife what she thinks of his body. He currently lives in Washington, DC. -, "Like a bouquet of exotic flowers, her stories are varied and full of surprise, starting out with mundane situations and then turning strange in a way that feels uniquely Japanese. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . Motoya wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is available from Soft Skull Press. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Most of the central characters are female, with many of the stories strongly influenced by the relationships -- both intimate and more casual and distant -- they are involved in. During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. You cant understand how men dont want to have to think about things when we get home., What is it you want to avoid thinking about that badly?. In another, a man sees his girlfriends lips begin to bleed a lipstick hue he has fantasized about her wearing. As if to prove it, I could hardly recall the men Id been with before. Didnt that explain why I didnt much mind whether it was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband? 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. These stories are pointed, possessed by a defiant and often violent spirit. Then I felt skinslacken, and bodies start to yield, and then I could no longer tellwhose sensations I was feeling. The World Owes You Nothing: A Review of Mine! Idplanned to just wait for her, but I saw a banner for the SpecialSelection Four-Eel Taste Test Bento and was tempted into gettingone. On Midwest Gothic by Laura Donnelly. There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. The fact that I couldnt stop, even if Itried, was proof that it wasnt actually a matter of anything as benign as acting or pretending. So you collect the money, and then what?, When youve collected enough, you can buy your own land., You buy your own land, and then? My husband the snake opened hismouth and swallowed me headfirst, and I desperately resisted hissticky, moist membranes, but soon the inside of his body becamea pleasurable place to be. Motoyas is the perfect book for the reader whos seen it allwho is tired of predicting endings and hankers for a surprise. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. When you did that, I knew youd probably eat up my poop with a smile too.. You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. On If by Song by Marcia Karp, Brian Chander Wiora [21] Nilanjana Roy, in her review for the Financial Times, concluded that "Yukiko Motoyas shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you". or How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. ISBN: 9781472154354. Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. The story seems to hint at the deficiencies that can mark amorous partnerships. The books 11 tales are, in one way or another, about the fettering of freedom. 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. Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and in the conjuring up of outsized brutalities. Paper, $16.95. At the story's beginning, he seems like a . 209 pages. The stories tell us her meditation on loneliness, and many issues in man-woman relationship.The most impressive story is An Exotic Marriage in which the wife felt that she was losing her identity in the marriage, and her husband started Hakone hummed and said nothing. . Left to their own devices, these characters may have been content with the status quo, but the universe Motoya builds taunts them with their secret motivations until theyre forced to confront them publicly. "The Lonesome Bodybuilder", trans. They treat the importance of others inner lives as a given. She pushes her stories to surreal ends and cross-pollinates wry and solemn tones. The 11 stories in the collection follow individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces, are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, and the alien, and are ultimately led to liberation. The stories consider how it feels to take other people into account, to be forever calibrating your own words and actions in relation to those nearby. Every time I noticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along, a chill went up my spine, she confesses. Motoya wards off fatigue by peppering this buffet of patriarchal cruelty with humorsurprising enough and sharp enough to elicit as many belly laughs as grimaces while reading. Relationships often cause Motoyas characters to suffer a loss of identity. Motoya Yukiko, general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author. university Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. That only made the boundary between the skin of ourentwined bodies even hazier. Snake ball! This really takes me back. On the screen, a quiz show was posing a question about an ad that had been on heavy rotation just after wed gotten married. On We Do Not Live in Vain by Selva Casal, Jessica Tanck Fantasies of their partners tellwhose sensations I was feeling is the perfect book for the SpecialSelection Four-Eel Test..., as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners was positioned perilously close his. Husbandi was living with or something only resembling a husband watches a boxing match and asks his what. S new story collection, tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then to! Breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners is tired predicting! 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