The Lonesome Bodybuilder, Yukiko Motoya
The Lonesome Bodybuilder, Yukiko Motoya
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The Lonesome Bodybuilder
Stories

Author: Yukiko Motoya, Asa Yoneda

Narrator: Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Richard Powers, Tanya Eby, Kate Mulligan, various narrators

Unabridged: 5 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/06/2018

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories

Synopsis

A housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physique―which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon―until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won’t come out of the fitting room―and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband’s features are beginning to slide around his face―to match her own.In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien―and, through it, find a way to liberation. The Lonesome Bodybuilder is the English-language debut of one of Japan’s most fearlessly inventive young writers.

About Yukiko Motoya

Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Her first story, “Eriko to zettai,” appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. Motoya 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 Yukio 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.

About Asa Yoneda

Asa Yoneda was born in Osaka, Japan, and lives in Bristol, United Kingdom. In addition to Yukiko Motoya, she has translated works by Banana Yoshimoto, Aoko Matsuda, and Natsuko Kuroda.

About Natalie Naudus

Natalie Naudus is one of the most beloved audiobook narrators working today and now author of her debut novel, Gay the Pray Away.

About Erin Bennett

Erin Bennett is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a stage actress who played Carlie Roberts in the BBC radio drama Torchwood: Submission. She can be heard on several video games. Regional theater appearances include the Intiman, Pasadena Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, A Noise Within, Laguna Playhouse, and the Getty Villa. She trained at Boston University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

About Tanya Eby

Tanya Eby is a novelist and an audiobook narrator who has earned several AudioFile Earphones Awards and been nominated for the Audie Award. She has a BA degree in English language and literature and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine.

About Kate Mulligan

Kate Mulligan has acted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for more than ten seasons in productions including Hairspray, Alice in Wonderland, and Sense and Sensibility. Her film and television work includes Being John Malkovich and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Liong

This book is made up of 11 short stories. I like the stories below: 1. The Lonesome Bodybuilder - 4 stars 2. Fitting Room - 4 stars 3. An Exotic Marriage - 4 stars Most of the stories are creative, fantasy, weird, and surreal.......more

Goodreads review by Robin

4.19 Stars. I decided to rate each individual story in this collection. The author used magical realism to create modern fairytales around the complex feelings of womenhood. The translator did a lovely job with this one, and it included modern slang terms which a less talented translator might have......more

Goodreads review by Sam

A lonely housewife takes up bodybuilding. A shop assistant tries to find the perfect outfit for a customer she never sees who’s locked in the fitting room. Broken umbrellas make people fly in typhoons, small musical instruments fall out of straw husbands and women duel with their male partners in th......more

Goodreads review by J.L.

“When I woke up and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face had finally begun to forget who I was." I liked the modestly or serenely surrealistic tone of Yukiko Motoya's short story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder. Some of the stories engaged me more than others. They are bite-sized stories, of......more

Quotes

“Eleven stories that fuse the banality of the everyday with dreamlike elements of fantasy.” Time

“At face value, the stories are fun and funny to read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface.” New York Times

“A blissfully surreal collection…Reality blurs with the fantastic, offering a welcome escape hatch out of a seemingly impossibly bleak world.” Huffington Post

“A diverse set of narrators skillfully delivers eleven stories about individuality, relationships, and liberation. Each narrator succeeds in portraying different characters in the collection…Flawlessly produced and narrated, this is an outstanding listen. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“Changing narrators from one story to the next gives the listener an even more tangible sense of delineation than they get in print…Motoya’s unsettling stories deliver a combination of internal revelation and external malaise, and the longest story, ‘An Exotic Marriage,’ is a particular standout with Natalie Naudus’s breathless delivery.” Paste magazine

“Six narrators…take turns evenly voicing eleven unpredictable tales…With aural amplification, the mundane morphs into the bizarre, while the fantastic settles into the seemingly normal.” Booklist (audio review)

“In eleven short stories, Yukiko Motoya pulls back the curtain from everyday lives, to reveal that beneath the most mundane lies a world bizarre and alien.” Bustle

“An often surreal, at times disturbing, and reliably twisted look at the hidden sides of our everyday lives.” Nylon

“The twelve hilarious fables in Yukiko Motoya’s The Lonesome Bodybuilder look at everyday life so closely they turn it inside out…Yet the way she tilts reality always interrogates something bigger…This is thrilling work.” Literary Hub

“An unusual but ingenious collection…Funny without collapsing into wackiness, these eccentric, beguiling stories are reminiscent of Haruki Murakami and Kafka.” Publishers Weekly

Awards

  • BBC Culture Magazine Pick
  • Akutagawa Prize
  • Kenzaburo Oe Prize
  • Vulture.com Pick
  • Nylon Magazine Pick
  • Millions.com Pick
  • Huffington Post Pick
  • Bustle Pick
  • Time Magazine Pick
  • Indie Next List
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • Paste Magazine Pick
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