() The writing itself is to be admired." "The Reason I Carry Biscuits to Offer to Young Boys", trans. Poems That Linger: Peter Campions One Summer Evening at the Falls, Johannes Gransson THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER By Yukiko Motoya Translated by Asa Yoneda 224 pp. The protagonist in the title story grows fond of combat sports and wonders why this didnt occur much earlier. In How to Burden the Girl, a thirty-four-year-old recluse spies on the younger woman who has moved in next door. I saw it on the local news the other day. -, "Many of the stories, deftly translated by Asa Yoneda, are arresting with their strong female lead characters, starting with the mundane before venturing deep into the rabbit hole with surreal twists and turns. I think thats the image I have of marriage. A friend recommends placing a stone between her and her husband to cure their transfiguration. One of Mocketts main foci is an introduction to Hayao Kawais suggestion of an aesthetic solution common in Japanese literature. Often--no, occasionally--when in a singular state of solitude which follows intense upheaval, there occurs these moments in which the world seems to expand into something unfathomably big. 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? Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. She has glimmering pink hair, shes an unstoppable ninja, she fights bad guys in the garden every day. $16.95. So, for example, the husband in 'The Straw Husband', in a relationship otherwise most like any other, is really made of straw ("yes, that straw, stalks of dried rice or wheat, plant matter used as fodder for farm animals, or for bedding -- tied into bundles and rolled into a human shape"), while the narrator of 'The Dogs' describes how: "I didn't like beds, so I slept standing up, leaning against the windowsill" (apparently every night). While not explicitly feminist, her female protagonists share a capacity for small rebellions, sudden twitches against life-long habits of conformity. For the narrator, San, a bored housewife whose husband ignores her in favor of TV and video games, anxiety is manifested literallyand strangely. Her first story, ""Eriko to zettai,"" appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. . I sat down on the couch and looked at the iPad screen. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? 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. Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. It featured eel sourced from the Shimanto River, Lake Hamana,the Mikawa region, and Miyazaki Prefecture, grilled bothwith sauce and without. Youknow, I think pears might be my favorite fruit, he announced. 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. Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER: STORIES by Yukiko Motoya, Tr. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Her husband, who bears the brunt of these jabs, deserves it all (and more). I was still thinking about the ex-wife following the refrigerator conversation. Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming normality of the narration, a mix of the absurd and matter-of-fact mundane. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. The stories are funny and creepy; they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. Bodybuilder is the best example, and in An Exotic Marriage, a familiar notion of couples starting to look alike turns eerie. Number of pages: 224. On We Do Not Live in Vain by Selva Casal, Jessica Tanck Michael Staley. The unsettling way people can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length An Exotic Marriage. Originally published on its own, it earned Motoya the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2016 and was translated for this collection. On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards 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. . We have to accept that were responsible for the physical effects theyre experiencing! a man yells, as the narrators girlfriends lips produce their own lipstick; the narrator tearfully euthanizes her. The following is from Yukiko Motoya's collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder. John Scioli, the owner of the Community Bookstore, in Brooklyn, prepares to shutter a neighborhood institution. She can no longer recognize the husbands face; he starts to do housework. The unpredictable narratives pair with curious and compelling imagery to create a palpable and inexplicable sense of wonder. Hey, do we have any more of those pears someone gave us theother day? Fun and funny . . But I guess that cant be right. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya (2018). Yukiko Motoya's imagination is wild and rich in her eleven whimsical short stories in this book. The titular bodybuilder lives what seems to be a structured, self-contained life (I decide who I am, and never consider other possibilities); bodybuilding is an exciting new discovery that expands her world. There was no response. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. I think?. But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. August 2021 Micro-Reviews, Christina Pugh [2] After completing high school, Motoya moved to Tokyo to study acting, and won a voice acting role in the Hideaki Anno anime adaptation of Kare Kano, but switched her focus to writing after a teacher praised a short play Motoya wrote for the school's graduation ceremony. (He will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor.) The husbands are oppressively thoughtless, moody, domineering. Asa Yoneda. Published in English by Soft Skull Press. In Yukiko Motoyas delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Mud Stuck to our Shoes: On The Insistence of Harm by Fernando Valverde, Edward Derby Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. Asa Yoneda, This page was last edited on 18 November 2022, at 09:31. When he notices that the fight has attracted her attention, he accuses her of lusting after the boxers and their muscled bodies. Sign up for our mailing list to get the latest updates on happenings at Maudlin House, and product discounts! (Several tales allude to Kwaidan, a ghoulish anthology compiled by the folklorist Lafcadio Hearn, in 1904.). (That may be an additional appeal of the gym: in a precarious world, a weight lifter looks exactly like what she is.) Many of the characters seek lives yet unlived, or lives once lived but later forgotten. . By Yukiko Motoya. Paper, $16.95. I guessed hemust be feeling needy. Characters change; literally, their facial features move, morph, disappear. or My body was startingto coil, and I tried to stop thinking by closing my eyes even more tightly. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is available from Soft Skull Press. These two stories stand out from the others, which, at times, are held back by traces of redundancy or ideas that are almost excessively legible. The Lonesome Bodybuilder (published as Picnic in the Storm in the UK .) In The Women, a man is forced to kill his own fantasies after they come to life and challenge him to a duel. You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period. I always do that, she admonishes herself. As the strangeness mounts, San observes her identity as something willed and imposed. In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Her novel Funuke domo kanashimi no ai o misero (Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!) Every time Inoticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along,a chill went up my spine. There is something pareidolic about the writing process. [27][28] Starting in 2014 she was a regular host for Season 4 of the TBS Radio program "The Top 5". Her coach's admiration for bodybuilders suggests the reason she was drawn to it, even if she wasn't initially aware of it: 2019-2021 the complete review 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. 209 pages. Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselvesand the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentencesare reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka . organisation How Climate-Change Fiction, or Cli-Fi, Forces Us to Confront the Incipient Death of the Planet. Other extraordinary examples from the collection: A girlfriend challenges her boyfriend to a duel and turns into a miniskirt-wearing siren; a husband made of straw harps on his wife to take better care of their BMW. The characters featured in them arent particularly good at intimacy, even if they live in close proximity to spouses, old friends, and co-workers. Histeeth must have been in their right place, because they made achamping sound as he chewed. Characters change . The Kenyon Review is supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. After that, my husband took to tinkling the fake coins incessantly,everywherein the bath, on the toilet, even under thecovers. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. Snake ball, huh? I poked at a piece of grilled eel laid on the rice, and pictured a bright white ball covered in scales. On Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing by Julie Marie Wade, Matt McBride It also indicates the range of Motoyas storytelling style by unveiling additional powers of suggestion and atmospheric description. From The Lonesome Bodybuilder. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2018. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. analyse how our Sites are used. Yukiko Motoya is a writer, playwright, and stage director. By emphasizing a characteristic nimbleness in Japanese storytelling, Mockett draws attention to these often-invisible constructs; she shows, using examples from a number of childrens stories, the ways in which the rigid archetypes that we learn to recognize as we grow upexpectations of character or plot; the solid demarcations of good or evilcan be blurred into something more delightfully nebulous than the western canon prepares us for. In so many of these stories, possibilities stretch, and the abandonment of realism feels like having your eyes wrenched open. $16.95. In the collections longest and scariest story, An Exotic Marriage, Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity of marriage. April 2021 Micro-Reviews, Amanda Auerbach Eine Hausfrau wird zur Bodybuilderin, aber ihrem arbeitsschtigen Ehemann fallen die neuen Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. Translated by Asa Yoneda. One night, after dinner, I was surprised to notice my husband engrossedin his iPad rather than the variety show playing on the TV. In "An Exotic Marriage," the collection's centerpiece, the narrator, Sen, marries a man who refuses to engage with the world. Only when you begin reading, when the . . But what was soappealing about the insipid map that looked like a stage backdropand its ever-twinkling coins? 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. A day goes by, and the clerk, who stays all night, offers the woman every piece of clothing in the store, then buys her clothes from another boutique to try on. Motoya pushes the premise further: as the narrators body drastically changes, her husband doesnt see it. Instead of responding, I looked down and nibbled a slice of pear. Everyday objects and places are transformed into odd salves for the hyper-fractured lives of these characters, adding a mischievous streak to The Lonesome Bodybuilder. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. Readers who are familiar with Japanese folklore, manga, or anime will probably find some of the themes to be mundane - there is much reminiscent of Rumiko Takahashi in the more fantastic stories, like The Dogs or An Exotic Marriage. (I want you to come out of that fitting room with a smile on your face! the attendant chirps, noting the slurping, roiling kind of sound emanating from behind the curtain.) How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Unlike San or the lonesome bodybuilder, this woman is unattached and finds respite in remote solitude. [6][7], In 2002, prompted by a magazine editor's invitation, Motoya made her fiction debut with the short story Eriko to zettai (Eriko and Absolutely). On Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, Lisa Hiton 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. The title story is one of her best: "Fighters are so . Infinite Entanglements in Allison Cobbs Plastic: An Autobiography, Elizabeth Bailey Eventually, the clerk has no option except to haul the fitting room out of the store. Other women in the book pursue men who are made of straw or advise each other to marry bicycle saddles. [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. Here, take it.. by There seems to be an essential despair of heterosexual partnership in these storiesnot that they suggest that a just and joyful partnership is an impossibility! Every time I would ask, You really enjoy itthat much? hed say, Thats not what its about, in a curiously languid tone. Was that the fault of the soil, or did the problem lie in the roots? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Soft Skull Press. Soft Skull Press. The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. And challenge him to a duel Arts and the abandonment of realism feels like having eyes! Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the characters seek lives yet unlived, Cli-Fi. Look alike turns eerie more tightly this collection is supported in part by the folklorist Hearn... Published on its own, it earned Motoya the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for. A Young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota whimsical short stories in this.. On 18 November 2022, at 09:31 as though that was who Id been all along, a brush the! 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