The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories

Yukiko Motoya is certainly a peculiar writer with a very specific worldview. I find it super interesting, her use of magical realism is so good, and it works to illustrate human relationships perfectly. Some of these stories are plain weird (Paprika Jiro) while others are slightly (or very) disturbing. I think there’s a bit of everything here, and I liked having such a wide palette of her stories to really get immersed in her peculiar universe.

Yukiko Motoya and Asa Yoneda have produced an intriguing English translation of Motoya's collection of award-winning short stories.Nearly all the included works comment incisively - and to various extents, allegorically - on the often-frustrating experiences of Japanese women.Yoneda has skillfully navigated a course between the Scylla of English speakers' presumed unfamiliarity with common Japanese idioms and cultural background, and the Charybdis of overly verbose translation, to give us a concise prose that renders Motoya's complex characters in broad strokes without bogging down in the minutiea of specific Japanese terms.There are a few points where I feel Motoya has glossed over too much: "tempura" is not so unfamiliar a term to English speakers that it need be changed to "fritters", for instance. A few other choices make little sense unless the reader is also familiar enough with Japanese to guess at the original phrase. But overall this reads like an effortless English-language work rather than a painstakingly translated volume; a terrific achievement in its own right.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. But Motoya's unique vision is still worth experiencing, and Yoneda's translation provides a clear and beautiful lense.

First time reading the author and I’m still undecided about how I feel! Some stories were really interesting but some were hard to get into or left me a little perplexed.

Okay, this book is weird. The stories seemed to me to be arranged in order of lesser to greater weirdness. Except for the last one, which probably belongs in the late middle. The weirdness is obvious, but the horror is subtle. It arises from the ordinary template upon which the weirdness is established, like glazing one watercolor on top of another one.I don't know that I would recommend the book to anybody that I know, but it is nonetheless a very good book. Just not a very happy one.

I think readers of Haruki Murakami will enjoy this book. Although i enjoy the flow especially the lonesome bodybuilders and shapeshifters story, some other stories such as the one with the dogs just left me puzzled and unable to understand the deeper meanings..

I don't know if the translation had anything to do with it, but the stories gradually turned dull and incomprehensible. I've read my fair share of magical realism, but these stories seemed underdeveloped and at times forced.

I’ve caught a bit of Motoya’s work in a few English-language literary journals and was thrilled to see she had an entire story collection put out by the venerable Soft Skull Press. These stories are like little else I’ve read and take you to strange places with surprisingly realistic characters inhabiting the pages. I can’t recommend The Lonesome Bodybuilder enough. It’s one of the freshest takes in fiction I’ve come across in ages.

Not sure what I was expecting, but I kept reading. I still keep thinking of some of the scenarios. You need to discover for yourself.

Nessas onze narrativas, Yukiko Motoya faz um ótimo uso do estranho que entra na vida de casais para balançar casamentos mornos, incomodar maridos desatentos e surpreender as expectativas dos personagens. A narrativa que dá título ao livro me conquistou logo de princípio, só pela premissa: uma mulher que encontra sua paixão no fisiculturismo, surpreendendo todos ao seu redor, menos o marido, que não percebe as mudanças físicas dela. Apesar de um final morno, os contos seguintes consertam essa pequena falha, sempre nos pegando de surpresa com seus finais, indo para um lado quando esperamos que vá para o outro. O mais conto longo (que pode-se considerar uma novela), "An Exotic Marriage", é um dos mais surpreendentes, não só pelo final, mas por todo o seu desenvolvimento, onde a autora brinca com a nossa busca por respostas, mudando toda a estrutura quando nos aproximamos de uma possível explicação. Sério, leiam! É uma coletânea surpreendernte, que eu adoraria ver traduzida para o português, pois creio que temos um público leitor ávido por esse tipo de histórias aqui no Brasil.

An interesting and engrossing blend of realities; the reader never knows what to expect but is always intrigued. Highly introspective, her characters are imbued with an indelibility. She captures well someone losing their mind in paranoia. A true flight of imagination and as a reader you have to just go for the ride.