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. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. Japanese novelist, playwright, and theatre director, "Yukiko Motoya takes a satirical look at the 'Super No-Flat', "Yusho Takiguchi, Yukiko Motoya share Akutagawa Prize while Bumpei Aoyama wins Naoki Prize", " ", "From violence to vulnerability, Yukiko Motaya enchants with 'The Lonesome Bodybuilder', "Yukiko Motoya's Surreal World of Alienated Characters", "Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection", "The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories by Yukiko Motoya tales of the unexpected", "Presenter Interview: The Playwright's Center of Minneapolis", "53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award goes to Ryuta Horai and Yukiko Motoya in a double awarding", "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", "The Reason I Carry Biscuits to Offer to Young Boys", "Alexandra Kleeman recommends "The Lonesome Bodybuilder" by Yukiko Motoya", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yukiko_Motoya&oldid=1122580502, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles with Japanese-language sources (ja), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 2006 10th Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award, Best Play category. Hey, give itback if youre not even going to play. My husband took the iPadfrom my hand and sank his head back to the game. . [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. Men and women enter into romances with shape-shifters. As a leashed man miserably admits, just before being yanked to mortal combat, This is all because of the desires of men like us. Such a desire, for a more exciting lover, has exciting effects: the women demand duels, then take their husbands and boyfriends down by the river to kill them. During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. In How to Burden the Girl, a thirty-four-year-old recluse spies on the younger woman who has moved in next door. On Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero, Benjamin Woodard "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", trans. All this time, I had been feedingmyself to those men. I dont remember where I read it. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER By Yukiko Motoya Translated by Asa Yoneda 224 pp. The Lake Hamana eel was firmer and more succulent than the one from the Mikawa region. In "An Exotic Marriage," the collection's centerpiece, the narrator, Sen, marries a man who refuses to engage with the world. A sales associate at a boutique stays overnight digging up outfits for someoneor somethingthat wont leave the dressing room. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is a refreshing reminder that fiction is an elastic medium, capable of stretching into new and surprising shapes. Then you collect those, so you can bank money again. I shivered, then looked up and saw there was an AC ventembedded in the ceiling right above my head. 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. 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. Hakone swiftly referred to the floor guide and said, This way, and took off without sparing a glance at the stalls she passed. 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 [27][28] Starting in 2014 she was a regular host for Season 4 of the TBS Radio program "The Top 5". After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. 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. -, "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. He says his ex-wifes been sending him strange garbled emails recently, I said. San isnt the only woman in Motoyas stories who feels neglected and vaguely undefined. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. 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. 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. The World Owes You Nothing: A Review of Mine! Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. I thought perhaps the gamegot more interesting the longer you played, but whenever I lookedover my husbands shoulder, the screen always looked the same. Motoyas book beguiles with its reversals: the bodybuilders husband may be unobservant to the point of eeriness, but, as it turns out, she is the shape-shifter, the trickster. I heard a tinkling sound like coins dropping into a piggy bank, which Id been hearing constantly all evening. . Id expected marriage to be an even more constricting flowerpot than my previous relationships. The husband . Then I felt skinslacken, and bodies start to yield, and then I could no longer tellwhose sensations I was feeling. I didnt let myself be bound by anything as common as common senseonly to be rewarded with surreal proof that her eyes had not deceived her. Her quickly buried feelings recall Sans mutating features. I was still thinking about the ex-wife following the refrigerator conversation. [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. His work has been published in Tin House Online, Nashville Review, Harvard Review, and Full Stop. From The Lonesome Bodybuilder. Mud Stuck to our Shoes: On The Insistence of Harm by Fernando Valverde, Edward Derby A married couple begin to look like each other, and the wife wonders how she can prevent it. At their very heart, however, are everyday struggles that are not only typical in contemporary Japanese society, but identifiable around the world" -. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. The protagonist in the title story grows fond of combat sports and wonders why this didnt occur much earlier. There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. In Fitting Room, the customer never comes out. Hakone quenched her thirst with cold roasted green tea from the vending machine. 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 . After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. . When you did that, I knew youd probably eat up my poop with a smile too.. . On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards MEDIA REVIEWS. Translated by Asa Yoneda. On Stardust Media by Christina Pugh, Jehanne Dubrow Coins.. organisation 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. Motoyas emphases include tedious relationships, workplace gender dynamics, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age. 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 . No, its not like that. 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. In another, a man sees his girlfriends lips begin to bleed a lipstick hue he has fantasized about her wearing. She looked like she was giving it some serious thought. At the story's beginning, he seems like a . 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. Sometimes the rules of the world change on the spot. The unsettling stories in The Lonesome Bodybuilder are deeply preoccupied with the yawning disconnect between people. Her books have been published in French and Norwegian . I think?. [19] It included a new translation of Irui konin tan under the title "An Exotic Marriage". The positioning of his features was deteriorating faster thanever. "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. Motoya Yukiko, general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author. Even the missteps attest to Motoyas fictive mandate: to be unburdened by rules and restraints. 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