I didn't like that story much at allit shouldn't have been in this collection. By Yukiko Motoya. He says his ex-wifes been sending him strange garbled emails recently, I said. Perhaps its greatest gifts are its aesthetic solutions, whichthough at most tangential to successful western narrativesoften feel like deep breathsconstructed benisons where a reader can get out from under the storm. Her varied work has resulted in numerous accolades, and, most recently, the release of The Lonesome Bodybuilder, the first book-length English translation of her fiction. I was still thinking about the ex-wife following the refrigerator conversation. There was a tremor in my hand holding the paring knife. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. Small discs ofdifferent colors twinkled all across the map. Translated by Asa Yoneda. I recalled seeing a circular in the mailroomabout plans to prune the plantings. Each time I looked at my husband lying on the couchshe thinks to herselfI had the strange impression I was living with a new kind of organism that would die if it exerted itself in any way. His laziness alarms her more than the migration of his features to new regions of his face. But I guess that cant be right. Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming . [10] Motoya's 2009 novel Ano ko no kangaeru koto wa hen (That Girl's Got Some Strange Ideas) was nominated for the 141st Akutagawa Prize. Motoya pushes the premise further: as the narrators body drastically changes, her husband doesnt see it. [29] As of 2017 she is co-host of the Fuji TV documentary series 7 Rules. [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. (Several tales allude to Kwaidan, a ghoulish anthology compiled by the folklorist Lafcadio Hearn, in 1904.). 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. "The Lonesome Bodybuilder", trans. Eventually, Id start to feel in danger of root rot, and would hurriedly break the pot and uproot myself. The World Owes You Nothing: A Review of Mine! Characters change; literally, their facial features move, morph, disappear. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2018. Excitement becomes execution. I think?. The climate crisis demands a form of literary expression that lifts it out of the realm of intellectual knowing and lodges it deep in readers bodies. () The writing itself is to be admired." How could he even see straight? By the first few sentences, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of [the story] "An Exotic Marriage", you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you' Financial Times 'Delightful . Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. Here, take it.. 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. Tomokos animosity toward her straw husband is as brief as it is startling. . ISBN: 9781472154354. On If by Song by Marcia Karp, Brian Chander Wiora On Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir by Natasha Trethewey, John Wall Barger In Front of Strangers I Sing: The Strange Intimacy of Paul Celan, Benjamin Hedin Arent you going to have any? the husband-like thing said. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. These stories are pointed, possessed by a defiant and often violent spirit. How Climate-Change Fiction, or Cli-Fi, Forces Us to Confront the Incipient Death of the Planet. Motoyas characters suffer from a deeper affliction than alienation; theyre often lost in relationships and attempting to carve out identities amid ambivalence. [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. The ride can be anxious but never dull. Motoya Yukiko, general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author. I saw it on the local news the other day. In How to Burden the Girl, a thirty-four-year-old recluse spies on the younger woman who has moved in next door. 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 Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. 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. 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. Such endings introduce a kind of ontological flexibility into the very structure of the storythey bring an essential playfulness to the work that is much more engaging and absorbing than a more rigid finale. [9] She was nominated a third time for her 2011 novel Nurui doku (Warm Poison), about a woman who has a relationship with a pathological liar claiming to be a former high school classmate. He currently lives in Washington, DC. Previously, her translated stories have appeared in GRANTA and CATAPULT . Anyone can read what you share. I didnt say what I was thinking, but he must have sensed it. Uwano recommended this game, my husband said at last. 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. On Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing by Julie Marie Wade, Matt McBride Lying on the couch, they prompt the strange impression of a new kind of organism that would die if it exerted itself in any way. There is acid in Motoyas surrealism: these women will put up with anything! 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. Perhaps the most resonant stories are those about marriage; Motoya (a playwright as well as an author) excels in putting husband and wife through unusual trials. . The following is from Yukiko Motoya's collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER: STORIES by Yukiko Motoya, Tr. On The Renunciations by Donika Kelly, John Bonanni Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. Hearing Hakonessnake-ball story, I finally felt that something that had beencloudy to me had become clear. Other nuances arrive in Paprika Jiro, a story that conveys a fondness for mercantile traditions. But Motoya's unique vision is still worth experiencing, and Yoneda's translation provides a clear and beautiful . [8], Motoya's novel Ikiteru dake de ai (Love at Least), about an unemployed and apparently depressed woman's relationship with her boyfriend, was published in 2006 by Shinchosha. After that, my husband took to tinkling the fake coins incessantly,everywherein the bath, on the toilet, even under thecovers. Some Googling I did found out that this was actually published as a novella . [17] The prize-winning work became the title story of a collection of four stories published later that year by Kodansha. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya (2018). the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. 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. 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. Maybe thats why its so easy being with you. 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. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. [16] At the prize ceremony the press commented on her mismatched socks, leading Motoya to admit that she had not expected to win, and had rushed to the prize ceremony without any special preparation. . During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. 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. The executive who holds her tongue at the meeting also sees, or dreams that she sees, faces in inanimate objects; she suffers from a condition called pareidolia, in which the mind perceives illusory patterns in random stimuli. He pulled the strip of squid from his mouth, and said, Itsbecause youre a housewife, San. . Translated by Asa Yoneda. 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. And so it is throughout: all these husbands are brutally banal in their ignorance, their apathies, and their cruelties. In the collection's longest and scariest story, "An Exotic Marriage," Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity . In The Lonesome Bodybuilder, characters correctly identify weird behavior as weird, but they mistake out-of-bounds, supernatural weird for human, lifes a rich tapestry weird. (Picnic in the Storm) And in The Dogs, the protagonist gains a sort of freedom, but this sunders threads both social and psychic; something ambiguously terrible rises in their place. Motoyas characters tend to be housewives and service workers, and her tales revolve around intimate or faux-intimate relationships. 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. Infinite Entanglements in Allison Cobbs Plastic: An Autobiography, Elizabeth Bailey . Her quickly buried feelings recall Sans mutating features. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. One woman tries to compensate for her husbands lack of confidence by listing all my own faults. A second character, an executive, wishes to speak her mind at a meeting but fears that she hasnt established herself among her colleagues as the kind of person who could say that sort of thing. The tales boil down to the problem of balancing empathy with self-assertionof both practicing kindness and expressing your own needs, and all while the people around you are behaving like wraiths or aliens. [22], Motoya continued writing and directing plays for her theatre company while also writing short stories and novels, and in 2006 she became the youngest person ever to win the Tsuruya Nanboku Memorial Award for Best Play, which she received for her play Snan (Distress). A draft blows through the talesloneliness, the most spectral emotion. [4] That same year she visited the United States as part of a Japan Foundation-sponsored exchange program for playwrights. No, its not like that. Idplanned to just wait for her, but I saw a banner for the SpecialSelection Four-Eel Taste Test Bento and was tempted into gettingone. 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. Perhaps the most resonant stories are those about marriage; Motoya (a playwright as well as an author) excels in putting husband and wife through unusual trials. Paper, $16.95. Motoya likes her fiction to swerve, not drift or meander, and she doesnt have patience for wandering. 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. The author reaches, with language, toward a reader who may or may not be there. Do you think hes too immature? Motoya locates a venerable sense of ancestry and inherited duty in the storys young market trader. Snake ball! No one in Yukiko Motoya's new story collection, . If the reader has trouble picturing this, there is a cartoon diagram to assist. My body was startingto coil, and I tried to stop thinking by closing my eyes even more tightly. I was folding laundry on the living room floor. Remember?. or Why dont you try a different game? Id ask, but hedonly say, I like this one.. 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