The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya

 

I listened to the unabridged audio version of The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories by Yukiko Motoya, which is a collection of eleven short stories narrated by various voice performance artists.

Listening time for The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya is 5 hours, 9 minutes.

This year, I've explored works written by a few new to me Japanese writers and Yukiko Motoya is one of them. The title of her short story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, definitely captured my attention, so I gave it a try.

All of the short stories in The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya were rather bizarre in my opinion. The best short story of the bunch was probably 'An Exotic Marriage'. This collection of short stories just wasn't my favorite. I'll skip on reading anything else written by Yukiko Motoya.

Below is the plot summary for The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya from Audible:

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

I am giving The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya a rating of 2 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!