21 Mar / The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]
Yukiko Motoya – who’s won major literary awards in her native Japan – makes her English-language debut (Anglophone-enabled by Asa Yoneda) with a label-defying, eyebrow-raising, beguilingly entertaining collection. Six narrators – Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Paul Michael Garcia, Tanya Eby, and Kate Mulligan – take turns evenly voicing 11 unpredictable tales that vary from domestic dramas to surreally speculative shorts, although the production (annoyingly) lacks reader attribution to individual stories.
Motoya examines marriage in the titular story featuring a woman whose substantial physical transformation goes unnoticed by her husband; in “An Exotic Marriage,” about a couple who begins to look too much alike; and in “The Straw Husband,” featuring a compression-tights-garbed, BMW-driving spouse made of … yes, straw. Unidentifiable beings appear in “Fitting Room,” searching for the perfect outfit, and in “I Called You by Name,” causing the “Drapery Bulge Effect.” Umbrellas enable flying in “Typhoon,” a woman seeks solitude with mysterious “Dogs,” and fantasy becomes fatal reality in “The Women.” With aural amplification, the mundane morphs into the bizarre, while the fantastic settles into the seemingly normal.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, March 8, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published 2019