Excitement becomes execution. 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. 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. Mud Stuck to our Shoes: On The Insistence of Harm by Fernando Valverde, Edward Derby 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. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. The same goes for San, whose face melts into new patterns. No one in Yukiko Motoyas new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. 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. Asa Yoneda, the books translator, has signal-boosted a story collection whose off-kilter style strenuously upholds Motoyas stated mission. Each of these titles represents an energizing alternative to the ripped-apart illogic of our contemporary reality. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. He currently lives in Washington, DC. But Motoya's unique vision is still worth experiencing, and Yoneda's translation provides a clear and beautiful . 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?. Asa Yoneda. Or: What really would have happened if Id gotten on the roller coaster that day? You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period. [20] Writing for The New York Times, Weike Wang praised Motoya's stories, noting that Motoya "wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes". 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. 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 Okay. I turned on my heel and went back into the kitchen. In The Women, a man is forced to kill his own fantasies after they come to life and challenge him to a duel. Tortured partnerships are a favorite target for the award-winning Japanese novelist and playwright, whose work has been published in English in literary magazines such as Granta, Tender, and Catapult. Her first story, ""Eriko to zettai,"" appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. In the opening story, a meek saleswoman whos taken up bodybuilding practices flexing, but drops the pose without having been able to look my mirror self in the eye. In another, a bored housewife notes that sometimes she looked in the mirror and was reminded of a blank postcard. Marriage, she concludes, has made her resemblance to paper even more notable than before. Yukiko Motoya is a writer, playwright, and stage director. offers FT membership to read for free. 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. 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? By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. . I followed, but never having been very good at walking throughcrowds, I kept barging into peoples shoulders, and by the time I caught up, she had already joined the line for the steak bento. How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. This sense of unpredictability traverses the entire collection, and yet the stories rarely seem desultory. I wonder. What would you think if you saw his true form? Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Fun and funny . She won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013; the Mishima Prize for How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage . I was feigning calm, but my voice came outhigher than normal. [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). The collection's longest story, "An Exotic Marriage," centers on a woman who notices that her husband's eyes and mouth are sliding around on his face. In a brilliant analogy, she compares marriage to a snake ball: There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. [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. On The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, Peter Campion "You should be careful," her . 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . He has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. On We Do Not Live in Vain by Selva Casal, Jessica Tanck What are you doing on there? I peered over his shoulder. An Exotic Marriage, which has some of my favorite elementsa burst of an ending, a Motoya premise built of clever conceit and thoughtful perceptionis inexplicably long, with several side-plots cluttering the central story. Then you can buy even more land.. (Picnic in the Storm) 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. [23] An English version of her play Vengeance can Wait, translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen, premiered in 2008 at the Best of Boroughs Festival in New York City. I guessed hemust be feeling needy. Sign up for our mailing list to get the latest updates on happenings at Maudlin House, and product discounts! One night, after dinner, I was surprised to notice my husband engrossedin his iPad rather than the variety show playing on the TV. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the Settings & Account section. In these contexts, Motoyas characters come to recognize the possibilities theyve denied themselves. On The Nightfields by Joanna Klink, Patrick Davis and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, Arent you going to have any? the husband-like thing said. In Fitting Room, a saleswoman attends day and night to a mysterious customer who refuses to leave a fitting room. 209 pages. Although the stories are often funny, theyre not sarcastic or ironic, and Motoyas not really kidding. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. 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. I dont remember where I read it. Fun and funny . Every time I noticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along, a chill went up my spine, she confesses. I thought perhaps the gamegot more interesting the longer you played, but whenever I lookedover my husbands shoulder, the screen always looked the same. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is available from Soft Skull Press. August 2021 Micro-Reviews, Christina Pugh Anyone can read what you share. Soft Skull Press. On Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing by Julie Marie Wade, Matt McBride At face value, the stories are fun and funny to read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface. 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. Didnt that explain why I didnt much mind whether it was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband? 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. Motoyas prose advances a similar principle. () The writing itself is to be admired." 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . Do you think hes still getting them? In her stories alienation is less a threat than a feature of contemporary life. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. You can have two slices of my steak if you give me some ofyour eel.. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. At other points, the couple are recast as ravenous snakes. The title story is one of her best: "Fighters are so . On The Renunciations by Donika Kelly, John Bonanni Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. New Worlds Forever Measured by the Old: On Burning Province by Michael Prior, Katherine M. Hedeen Every time I would ask, You really enjoy itthat much? hed say, Thats not what its about, in a curiously languid tone. At the end of a story with an aesthetic solution, the narrative action is suspendedrather than resolvedand the author leaves the audience with a natural image that resists interpretation. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? Her husbands features are always shifting on his face, and soon he resembles, variously, a monster, a snake, a new creature, his wife, and then, finally, a mountain peony. Relationships often cause Motoyas characters to suffer a loss of identity. 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. Hakone swiftly referred to the floor guide and said, This way, and took off without sparing a glance at the stalls she passed. At first, The Lonesome Bodybuilder appears most interested in chills and moods; I needed time for its feminism and its political threads to catch the light. MEDIA REVIEWS. Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselves and the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentences are reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka Galchen and George Saunders. One of the collections most active narrators is the curmudgeonly craftswoman at the center of The Dogs, the penultimate story. The reader wonders: Am I the strange one? When I served him the peeled pear segments on a plate, thehusband-like creature excitedly reached for a cocktail stick. Meanwhile, the reader watches each transformation and stab at connection. 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. Hey, do we have any more of those pears someone gave us theother day? 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. The Lonesome Bodybuilder (published as Picnic in the Storm in the UK ) 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. Michael Staley. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. But Motoya belongs more to modern oddness than to a fabulist tradition. His work has been published in Tin House Online, Nashville Review, Harvard Review, and Full Stop. The husband, San explains, waited until after their marriage to reveal the depths of his incuriosity. . But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. The stories are funny and creepy; they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. I finished towel-dryingmy hair and stepped out onto the balcony to bring in the laundryId hung out that afternoon. On Midwest Gothic by Laura Donnelly. Nov. 2018. The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker He seemed not to realize that anything was amiss, and simplylooked at me with his terrifyingly wide-set eyes, and said, Are they all gone?. 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. (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.) The Kenyon Review is supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. Her books have been published in French and Norwegian . 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 collections longest story, An Exotic Marriage, is more of a novella, and explores physical transformation as a metaphor for the shifting of identities in a relationship. "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 . Her quickly buried feelings recall Sans mutating features. Hearing Hakonessnake-ball story, I finally felt that something that had beencloudy to me had become clear. Then I felt skinslacken, and bodies start to yield, and then I could no longer tellwhose sensations I was feeling. 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 These uncanny stories surprise, unnerve and haunt, Spectator Incredibly enjoyable stories, Daily Mail . 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. Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. She is typical of Motoyas women: conferring an excess of personhood on whomever or whatever is at hand, yearning to connect to something that isnt there. Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group. All the while, it seems her husband cant be bothered to noticeshe is an afterthought only, and he appears to be too bored of life to be able to sense the swirling wonder of her story. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. [4] From 2005 to 2006 Motoya was the Friday host for Nippon Broadcasting System's late night radio show All Night Nippon. On The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy, Asa Drake She pushes her stories to surreal ends and cross-pollinates wry and solemn tones. Motoyas prose is earnest and casual, as if the writer is trying to convince a friend of a persistent but invisible pest. The ride can be anxious but never dull. Motoya pushes the premise further: as the narrators body drastically changes, her husband doesnt see it. Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Your email address will not be published. But it only applies when the snakes consume each other at the same rate. Each story begins unsuspectingly a clerk helps a woman in a changing room, a wife decides to go to the gym and, from these seemingly realistic setups, the magical and the surreal unfold. Near But Not Touching: On The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies, Tracy Zeman THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER: STORIES by Yukiko Motoya, Tr. Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and in the conjuring up of outsized brutalities. 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 . When something akin to freedom is gained, its often vague or ostensible, but the impediments to that freedom are surveyed in great detail. Her work has been adapted multiple times for film. 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. One of Mocketts main foci is an introduction to Hayao Kawais suggestion of an aesthetic solution common in Japanese literature. "In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar . organisation The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. Maybe thats why its so easy being with you. Then you collect those, so you can bank money again. The weird garbled messages?, No, but you can just tell these things sometimes., Huh. He probably thought that once he and I became one,he would never again have to worry about being judged by others. That only made the boundary between the skin of ourentwined bodies even hazier. In the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage," San is concerned about her husband's increasing lassitude about work, and her perception that his facial . Why was I so happy to be married to a bunch of straw?, she wonders to herself, before finally reassembling him. analyse how our Sites are used. Translated by Asa Yoneda. The collection is more hits than misses, but a few stories, like Paprika Jiro and Typhoon, skew too quirky and become trivial, though theyre buoyant with fancy. [15], In 2016, on her fourth nomination, Motoya won the 154th Akutagawa Prize for her story Irui konin tan (Tales of Marriage to a Different Sort), in which a wife discovers that she and her husband look more and more alike as they grow older together. Our Final Words: A Review of Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff, Katherine M. Hedeen One woman puts it to her husband directly: You can stop being husband shaped now! Asa Yoneda. The collections longest story, An Exotic Marriage, centers on a woman who notices that her husbands eyes and mouth are sliding around on his face. Motoyas characters suffer from a deeper affliction than alienation; theyre often lost in relationships and attempting to carve out identities amid ambivalence. This criticism becomes pointed when juxtaposed with the final story in the collection, The Straw Husband, about a newlywed woman named Tomoko who is unfailingly devoted to her husband, a man made of straw. 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. I could have understood if the game offered a vision of a wonderful world more exciting than real life. No, its not like that. 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. But in a world that both values men and teaches men to value themselves so much more highly than their partners, any partnership seems doomed to disappoint. By the first few sentences of The Lonesome Bodybuilder, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of "An Exotic Marriage," you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you." --Financial Times "Motoya [has a] gift for making the ordinary magical." --Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture Here, take it.. 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. Nevertheless, she feels invisible because her husband never notices her. Unlike the alienation other characters face within the context of relationships, she is literally all alone, but this only strengthens her sense of self. 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. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. 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. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. Her novel Funuke domo kanashimi no ai o misero (Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!) 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. Look at the bottom of the screen. The unpredictable narratives pair with curious and compelling imagery to create a palpable and inexplicable sense of wonder. [26], Nobuko Tanaka of The Japan Times has called Motoya "the darling of Japanese media" for her frequent contributions to Japanese magazines, television, and radio. She admits that she has lost confidence in herself, living with a perfectionist husband (who doesn't pay that much attention to her, long oblivious even to the dramatic physical change she undergoes). Sometimes the rules of the world change on the spot. 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. Id expected marriage to be an even more constricting flowerpot than my previous relationships. John Scioli, the owner of the Community Bookstore, in Brooklyn, prepares to shutter a neighborhood institution. Maybe I dont really know, myself. 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. . She commits to it, lifting regularly and consuming protein powder, yet while others notice her transformation, her husband does not. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. And product discounts stories are often funny, theyre not sarcastic or ironic, and product discounts the translator... Skin of ourentwined bodies even hazier were responsible for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation of an solution... 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Than a feature of contemporary life each start cannibalizing the other ones tail Edward... Jaeggy, Peter Campion & quot ; you should be careful, & quot ; Fighters so.