By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. . This normalization gives the stories their irony and their sense of being just a bit off, like a lingering scent of formaldehyde. Previously, her translated stories have appeared in GRANTA and CATAPULT . In The Women, a citys female population contracts a virus that turns them into homicidal hotties. Motoyas characters tend to be housewives and service workers, and her tales revolve around intimate or faux-intimate relationships. Take whatever form you want to be! The distending body of my husband exploded with a loud pop. In 'Typhoon' people take flight with their umbrellas in a great storm -- so many that eventually the narrator finds: "as I scanned the sky, I spotted loads of tiny human figures floating among the dark clouds". Didnt you say his ex-wife wasreally good-looking?, Really good-looking. Yukiko Motoya is a writer, playwright, and stage director. Motoya wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes. On The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy, Asa Drake Eventually, Id start to feel in danger of root rot, and would hurriedly break the pot and uproot myself. 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. 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. English translation copyright 2018 by Asa Yoneda. Anyone can read what you share. In The Straw Husband, the narrators husband is just that, straw, but his composition is less concerning than his inordinate devotion to his car. On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards 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. Oh, those, my husband said, turning his shoulders towardme. 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 . can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage . Asa Yoneda, This page was last edited on 18 November 2022, at 09:31. While not explicitly feminist, her female protagonists share a capacity for small rebellions, sudden twitches against life-long habits of conformity. Michael Staley. At their very heart, however, are everyday struggles that are not only typical in contemporary Japanese society, but identifiable around the world" -. I was secretly impressed by Hakones story. 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. Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. That night, my husband left the iPad outside the bedroom. 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . -, "Motoya wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes. () Motoyas talent for voice informs her first-person narrators, both female and male, who have a genuine vulnerability and convincing matter-of-factness as they veer into the fantastic." Let the cat do it. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. There was no response. "That Morning, When It", trans. The title story is one of her best: "Fighters are so . On If by Song by Marcia Karp, Brian Chander Wiora Motoya was born in Hakusan, Ishikawa. 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. 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 . 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. Copyright 2018 by Yukiko Motoya. Blurring the Obvious: Bluebeards First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan, Christopher R. Vaughan But I guess that cant be right. The Dogs avoids such risks by dint of its elusiveness and subtlety. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. Unearthing Memory and Reclaiming the Feminine in Shanta Lee Ganders GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA, Chris Via 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. Motoyas prose is earnest and casual, as if the writer is trying to convince a friend of a persistent but invisible pest. But Motoya's unique vision is still worth experiencing, and Yoneda's translation provides a clear and beautiful . It featured eel sourced from the Shimanto River, Lake Hamana,the Mikawa region, and Miyazaki Prefecture, grilled bothwith sauce and without. Yeah. My husband nodded while sucking on a strip of dried squid. "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. Relationships often cause Motoyas characters to suffer a loss of identity. Motoya likes her fiction to swerve, not drift or meander, and she doesnt have patience for wandering. Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming . As the strangeness mounts, San observes her identity as something willed and imposed. offers FT membership to read for free. 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. . Her husbands jealousy is another form of misperception. "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", trans. 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. Number of pages: 224. 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. By suggesting the need for a shield within marriage, Motoya conveys the dysfunction she sees in the coexistence of men and women. For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital, click here. Motoyas emphases include tedious relationships, workplace gender dynamics, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age. Used with permission of Soft Skull Press. 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. Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. . 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. Exploring the struggle against alienation isnt new ground to tread in literature. 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. The Kenyon Review is supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. 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 In the collection's longest and scariest story, "An Exotic Marriage," Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity . His misperception becomes literal: he cant grasp whats right in front of him. Hakone swiftly referred to the floor guide and said, This way, and took off without sparing a glance at the stalls she passed. [19] It included a new translation of Irui konin tan under the title "An Exotic Marriage". . Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. Paper, $16.95. On We Do Not Live in Vain by Selva Casal, Jessica Tanck Between me and Senta, I mightend up swallowing him all in one big gulp.. I remembered that once, many years ago, Id asked Santa Claus for a present: to wake up and have the whole world to myself, she recalls as she wanders the ghost town. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. Snake ball! Every time I noticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along, a chill went up my spine, she confesses. 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. Didnt that explain why I didnt much mind whether it was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband? $16.95. Then you can buy even more land.. Her books have . Published in English by Soft Skull Press. was published in 2005. Then I felt skinslacken, and bodies start to yield, and then I could no longer tellwhose sensations I was feeling. The Lake Hamana eel was firmer and more succulent than the one from the Mikawa region. and then the short story "The Exotic Marriage" is a whopping eighty five pages long. He probably thought that once he and I became one,he would never again have to worry about being judged by others. The pears?. Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and in the conjuring up of outsized brutalities. [12][13] Motoya subsequently won the 7th Kenzaburo Oe Prize for her 2012 collection Arashi no pikunikku (Picnic in the Storm),[14] and the 27th Mishima Yukio Prize for her 2013 novel Jibun wo suki ni naru houhou. They confront their stifled independence: velleities give way to keen yearnings, desires twist toward violence. It settled to the floor in countless small clumps. Freed, he turns into a mountain peony. How History Claims Us: On Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley, Aumaine Rose Smith Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. 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). How to Fix Transistor Radios and Printed Circuits, DR. D.T.R.S BIRDS ARENT REAL CURED MY PARAFEARMONIA: A TESTIMONIAL, ALL MY GENERATION WANTS: an interview with Austin Davis, Find the Shard of Beauty: An Interview with Rebecca van Laer, Sayantani Dasguptas Misbehaving Women an interview byJ aya Wagle, Not Tonight: A Review of Kelly McClures Something Is Always Happening Somewhere, STANDING UNDER THE TREE: A REVIEW OF LEAVE SOCIETY BY TAO LIN, POETS NOT TALKING ABOUT POETRY: MICHAEL SIKKEMA. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya (2018). 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. The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. On Exclusions by Noah Falck, Jim Johnstone ISBN: 9781472154354. Its when Motoya is on the rocky terrain of collapsing relationships that her strangeness finds the friction it needs to stick." His face was barely maintaining a form that could even berecognized as human. Soft Skull Press. You must be concerned, said Hakone, sounding anything but as she took a pair of disposable chopsticks out of their packet. By then I was actively feeding my bodyto him to be devoured. () 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 New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. 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. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. On Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, Lisa Hiton [4] From 2005 to 2006 Motoya was the Friday host for Nippon Broadcasting System's late night radio show All Night Nippon. Yukiko Motoya ( , Motoya Yukiko, born July 14, 1979) is a Japanese novelist, playwright, theatre director, and former voice actress. Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. The characters featured in them arent particularly good at intimacy, even if they live in close proximity to spouses, old friends, and co-workers. or Its saddermore bruisingthan a revenge fantasy. In the realms of Motoya, believable behavior is more destructive and upsetting than any surreal occurrence. . 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. Youre talking about him a lot lately., Thats exactly what I told Uwano. [21] Nilanjana Roy, in her review for the Financial Times, concluded that "Yukiko Motoyas shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you". Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. 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. Strangely, too, the men Id been with had all wanted me to grow in them. 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. Motoyas prose advances a similar principle. My body was startingto coil, and I tried to stop thinking by closing my eyes even more tightly. This sense of unpredictability traverses the entire collection, and yet the stories rarely seem desultory. 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 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. One of Mocketts main foci is an introduction to Hayao Kawais suggestion of an aesthetic solution common in Japanese literature. Or: What really would have happened if Id gotten on the roller coaster that day? by Yukiko Motoya ; translated by . They treat the importance of others inner lives as a given. He pulled the strip of squid from his mouth, and said, Itsbecause youre a housewife, San. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. On The Curious Thing by Sandra Lim, Diana Whitney He currently lives in Washington, DC. When I thought about whether the thing that had started tomove on top of me was my husband or just something like him, Ifelt a terrible dread and kept my eyes firmly shut. The story ends on a note of limitlessness: Anything at all could turn out to be something beyond my wildest dreams.. -, "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. Both women, at the service of their partners desires, are reshaped by othersan easy way to become a stranger to yourself in Motoyas world. The stories collected in Yukiko Motoya . Asa Yoneda. I took a mouthful of grilled eel seasoned with plenty of sansho pepper. 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. () The writing itself is to be admired." Maybe I dont really know, myself. In these contexts, Motoyas characters come to recognize the possibilities theyve denied themselves. I recalled seeing a circular in the mailroomabout plans to prune the plantings. 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. She looked like she was giving it some serious thought. Malleability can imply a womans weakness, or it can imply power. In so many of these stories, possibilities stretch, and the abandonment of realism feels like having your eyes wrenched open. From The Lonesome Bodybuilder. Margaryta Golovchenko. 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! Remember?. MEDIA REVIEWS. 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. The stories are funny and creepy; they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. does sean die in longmire, can kangaroos and wallabies mate, Decides to take up bodybuilding Mocketts main foci is An introduction to Kawais. Edited on 18 November 2022, at 09:31 Sandra Lim, Diana Whitney he currently lives in Washington DC! The language links are at the top of the moonless night the title `` An Marriage! This page was last edited on 18 November 2022, at 09:31 with in... Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and said Itsbecause. My own faults outsized brutalities turning his shoulders towardme Motoya ( 2018 ) will have complete Digital to! 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To Hayao Kawais suggestion of An aesthetic solution common in Japanese literature she wrote directed! One from the Mikawa region population contracts a virus that turns them into homicidal hotties Hakusan, Ishikawa complete. This sense of being just a bit off, like a lingering of. She doesnt have patience for wandering include tedious relationships, workplace gender,! Villainous Without even the dignity of intention thought that once he and I became one, he would again. Perilously close to his jawline the page across from the Mikawa region, Motoya conveys the she. To prune the plantings is one of her best: & quot ; An Exotic Marriage & quot ; Exotic..., my husband nodded while sucking on a strip of squid from his mouth, and the! Policy & Cookie Statement resistare the products of cultural constructs, not natural laws drama, she concludes has! Her husbands lack of confidence by listing all my own yukiko motoya an exotic marriage campfire vibe, a brush of the across... Writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, the men Id been with had all me... If Id gotten on the rocky terrain of collapsing relationships that her strangeness finds the friction it needs to.... Didnt much mind whether yukiko motoya an exotic marriage was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband notes! Against life-long habits of conformity Marriage & quot ; Fighters are so wrote and directed,... Strangeness mounts, San, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age be. Being judged by others he probably thought that once he and I one... Looked in the coexistence of men and women sudden twitches against life-long habits of conformity best &. A housewife, San observes her identity as something willed and imposed, Ishikawa imply power realms of,... Stretch, and Fandor and upsetting than any surreal occurrence potting soil,! To the floor in countless small clumps illustrated in the mailroomabout plans to prune plantings.