
The Lonesome Bodybuilder
Stories
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By:
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Yukiko Motoya
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 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 her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face - to match her own.
In these 11 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.
BBC Culture Magazine Pick
Akutagawa Prize
Kenzaburo Oe Prize
Vulture.com Pick
Nylon Magazine Pick
Millions.com Pick
Huffington Post Pick
Bustle Pick
©2018 Yukiko Motoya (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...





















Editor's Pick
Super strong short stories
"I love short stories because their brevity often makes them more bewildering and more stimulating than longer form writing. Yukiko Motoya’s debut collection is a great example of just how shocking great short stories can be. Taken on their own, the stories in this collection are beyond baffling, but cumulatively they offer an intimate perspective of the deeply personal irrationalities we all wrestle with on a daily basis. With each new character, I felt I had fallen in on a subterranean well of emotion. And with each new narrator, even though I knew I was hearing a new voice, I felt a unifying urgency that kept me absorbed and for some reason, comfortable. Even when it got real weird."
—Michael D., Audible Editor
Weird, until I caught on
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magical, strange, delightful
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Quirky
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Surreal Sad Lady Stories
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This author does interest me and I would be interested in a full novel.
Interesting stories
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The English translation seems to capture the emotional undercurrents. These stories read like a chat with the most interesting person you know
The Ethereal Everday story
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Very interesting collection of short stories
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Magical realism stories
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lost in translation
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