She cares about females struggling with loneliness and unfulfilling relationships. Motoya Yukiko writes stories of magical realism. ‘Dogs’ is a dream-like story about solitude and dog-friendship in a surreal setting during winter in an isolated mountain cabin. ‘Q&A’ contains an interview with a fictional female celebrity in her eighties, which is amusing and witty. The ‘Fitting Room’ is very funny as it takes the idea of customer service on to a new level. As her muscles grow everybody around her makes remarks, but the one who does not notice her physical changes is her husband.

I liked ‘The Lonesome Bodybuilder’, a story of a wife who begins body-building in order to impress her husband. They can be summarized as bizarre, witty, surreal and somewhat absurd. The other stories of the compilation are different in quality and length. It is obvious, that she struggles with the concept of marriage and her odd husband, who is going through a metamorphosis throughout the story with a surprising end. Imagine two snakes eating each other from the tail up to their heads until they form a ball. The central theme is about daily life from the perspective of a wife, who compares her relationship with her husband with a so-called snake ball. The longest story, about half of the book, is called ‘An Exotic Marriage’ which won the 154th Akutagawa Prize in 2016. It consists of ten, mainly weird surreal short stories. ‘The Lonesome Bodybuilder’ is a short story collection written by the female Japanese author Motoya Yukiko 本谷有希子 (born 1979).

The lonesome bodybuilder