But I guess that cant be right. Take whatever form you want to be! The distending body of my husband exploded with a loud pop. Her stories are about relationships between men and womenseemingly familiar territory, but made strange by the intrusion of surreal elements. This normalization gives the stories their irony and their sense of being just a bit off, like a lingering scent of formaldehyde. I have the feeling I would have met a version of myself I dont know now? On The Curious Thing by Sandra Lim, Diana Whitney Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group. You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period. They treat the importance of others inner lives as a given. At their very heart, however, are everyday struggles that are not only typical in contemporary Japanese society, but identifiable around the world" -. Marie Mockett takes umbrage, in her excellent Lit Hub essay Our Fairy Tales, Ourselves, with critics and philosophers whose pursuit of universal laws of narrative structure blind them to the expansive possibilities of literature. [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. The tales in The Lonesome Bodybuilder boil down to the problem of balancing empathy with self-assertion, all while the people around you are behaving like wraiths or aliens. Margaryta Golovchenko. Every time I noticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along, a chill went up my spine, she confesses. 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. Their changing forms force San and her husband to confront the half-truths their marriage is founded on. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window). 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. [17] The prize-winning work became the title story of a collection of four stories published later that year by Kodansha. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. . 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. Every time I would ask, You really enjoy itthat much? hed say, Thats not what its about, in a curiously languid tone. 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 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. Fun and funny . He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. But it only applies when the snakes consume each other at the same rate. On Pillar of Books by Moon Bo Young, Kyle Wang After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. In the wonderful title story, the narrator returns from the grocery store to find her husband sitting on the couch, watching a boxing match. With frank sincerity, Motoya makes the exhausted clichs of marriage and intimacy literal, and thus, energetically strange. Number of pages: 224. 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. Asa Yoneda. . Youd just gotten braces, and you said the metal hurt and you couldnt eat anything. But Motoya belongs more to modern oddness than to a fabulist tradition. English translation copyright 2018 by Asa Yoneda. Do you remember, on our honeymoon, how I chewed up allthe fruit for you so you could eat it?, Sure. 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. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. $16.95. Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. When I served him the peeled pear segments on a plate, thehusband-like creature excitedly reached for a cocktail stick. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. Its also the collections penultimate entry. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER: STORIES by Yukiko Motoya, Tr. 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. She comes to have a community of people who support her, and her bulging musclesher arms looked huge enough to snap a log in halfearn her a following at the natural-beauty store where she works. 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. From Apocalypse to Apocalypso: On An Ecotopian Lexicon, Ryan Lackey Previously, her translated stories have appeared in GRANTA and CATAPULT . Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the Settings & Account section. His face was barely maintaining a form that could even berecognized as human. Empire Gold : A Review of Claire Meuschkes UPEND, John Wall Barger 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? But she doesnt want the menshe wants the muscles. Excitement becomes execution. 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. Sometimes the rules of the world change on the spot. Asa Yoneda. Every time I got together with someone new, I got replanted, and the nutrients from the old soil disappeared without a trace. But something else is at work, too: throughout the collection, and especially in stories like Typhoon, Straw Husband, and The Dogs. 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. by Michael Heller and James Salzman, Zach Savich On The Nightfields by Joanna Klink, Patrick Davis On Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, Lisa Hiton Between me and Senta, I mightend up swallowing him all in one big gulp.. The women in these stories find themselves with bad mennot malicious or violent, but complacent, uninteresting, and undeserving of their partners. The ride can be anxious but never dull. Its when Motoya is on the rocky terrain of collapsing relationships that her strangeness finds the friction it needs to stick." Nevertheless, she feels invisible because her husband never notices her. 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. The Lonesome Bodybuilder is made up of 10 short stories, some barely three or four pages long, and a novella, "An Exotic Marriage". . On Midwest Gothic by Laura Donnelly. 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. 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. 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. This is abundantly illustrated in "An Exotic Marriage," a novella about a woman, San, who begins to fear that her husband's identity is blending with her own. Premium access for businesses and educational institutions. Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Uwano recommended this game, my husband said at last. For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital, click here. The complete review's Review: . Only when you begin reading, when the . Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. These pastiches, parodies, and hauntings are all brilliantly translatedwith all their uncanny intactby Asa Yoneda. There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. I gave up and cleared the table andwent for a bath, but when I came back, my husband hadnt moved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Claire Crews And they eat and they eat at exactly the same speed, until theyre just two heads making a ball, and then they both get eaten up and disappear. There is something pareidolic about the writing process. 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. [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. Asa Yoneda. . In The Women, a man is forced to kill his own fantasies after they come to life and challenge him to a duel. Go, Zoromi, go do it for her. He movedthe cat off the space beside him where shed been asleep, and beckoned to me. The other persons ideas, interests, andhabits would gradually take the place of my own. Unearthing Memory and Reclaiming the Feminine in Shanta Lee Ganders GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA, Chris Via This is abundantly illustrated in An Exotic Marriage, a novella about a woman, San, who begins to fear that her husbands identity is blending with her own. . Our Final Words: A Review of Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff, Katherine M. Hedeen Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. 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. Fun and funny . Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is available from Soft Skull Press. Motoyas emphases include tedious relationships, workplace gender dynamics, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age. One night, after dinner, I was surprised to notice my husband engrossedin his iPad rather than the variety show playing on the TV. Arent you going to have any? the husband-like thing said. Maybe thats why its so easy being with you. . When I sat down next to him, the husband-like thing pickedup the TV remote and started flipping through channels. 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. Copyright 2018 by Yukiko Motoya. Remember?. Her husband, who bears the brunt of these jabs, deserves it all (and more). [25] A film adaptation of Ranb to taiki (Vengeance Can Wait), directed by Masanori Tominaga and starring Tadanobu Asano, Minami Hinase, and Eiko Koike, premiered in Japan the next year. Bodybuilder is the best example, and in An Exotic Marriage, a familiar notion of couples starting to look alike turns eerie. [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. On The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy, Asa Drake or When he notices that the fight has attracted her attention, he accuses her of lusting after the boxers and their muscled bodies. Anyone can read what you share. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. [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. Your email address will not be published. The narrator of An Exotic Marriage notices that she and her husband are beginning to look alike, but her husbands investment in game shows is the greater threat to her happiness and autonomy. How History Claims Us: On Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley, Aumaine Rose Smith Motoya was born in Hakusan, Ishikawa. Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. [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. [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. Okay. I turned on my heel and went back into the kitchen. 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . 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. 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. [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. They operate, she writes, with a cripplingly limited understanding of what successful story structure is and is not, and what ought to feel satisfying. Their understandingsand ours, though we may try to resistare the products of cultural constructs, not natural laws. Exploring the struggle against alienation isnt new ground to tread in literature. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. Each time I looked at my husband lying on the couch, I had the strange impression I was living with a new kind of organism that would die if it exerted itself in any way. 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. In the collection's longest and scariest story, "An Exotic Marriage," Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity . (Several tales allude to Kwaidan, a ghoulish anthology compiled by the folklorist Lafcadio Hearn, in 1904.). The pears?. 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?. [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). Touch one and see, he said, so I tried pressing on a browndisc with my finger. Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. They confront their stifled independence: velleities give way to keen yearnings, desires twist toward violence. Yukiko Motoya so commented on her career and creative process during an interview for Granta. Meanwhile, the reader watches each transformation and stab at connection. "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. On A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill, Nicholas Bredie Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. All this time, I had been feedingmyself to those men. I shivered, then looked up and saw there was an AC ventembedded in the ceiling right above my head. I dont remember where I read it. Walker Rutter-Bowman received his MFA from Syracuse University. On Deluge by Leila Chatti, Anne Graue 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. Hearing Hakonessnake-ball story, I finally felt that something that had beencloudy to me had become clear. 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? () The writing itself is to be admired." Her work has been adapted multiple times for film. During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. She commits to it, lifting regularly and consuming protein powder, yet while others notice her transformation, her husband does not. Even when she poses in front of him in a micro bikini, her hair now short, her body filled out and covered in tanning oil, he asks: Whats that? Some changes render you, paradoxically, more yourself. After that, my husband took to tinkling the fake coins incessantly,everywherein the bath, on the toilet, even under thecovers. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? 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. 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. 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 . For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the Settings & Account section. Other nuances arrive in Paprika Jiro, a story that conveys a fondness for mercantile traditions. 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. () By the first few sentences of, "Like soap bubbles, several of these stories catch your eye, but the instant they are gone you forget about them. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER By Yukiko Motoya Translated by Asa Yoneda 224 pp. "The Reason I Carry Biscuits to Offer to Young Boys", trans. No spam, we promise! 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 . Michael Staley. Asa Yoneda. "Life's not worth living if you're not tending to the whims and demands of a high-maintenance lover!". Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. Then you can buy even more land.. and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. 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 . By then I was actively feeding my bodyto him to be devoured. Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links, Twelve stories from collections originally published in Japanese in 2015 and 2016, "Her characters seem to be searching for the strangest, and most estranged, parts of themselves. We use Hakone quenched her thirst with cold roasted green tea from the vending machine. A married couple begin to look like each other, and the wife wonders how she can prevent it. Characters change; literally, their facial features move, morph, disappear. . 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. Or: What really would have happened if Id gotten on the roller coaster that day? Some Googling I did found out that this was actually published as a novella . Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is a refreshing reminder that fiction is an elastic medium, capable of stretching into new and surprising shapes. Published later that year by Kodansha to it, with considerable success a... Sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota she appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, which. A bit off, like a lingering scent of formaldehyde uwano recommended this game, my husband said last. 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