Full name: The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories

Author: Yukiko Motoya Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Short Stories, Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781593766788 1593766785

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 English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers. Similar books: The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets by Sophie Hannah Alone With You by Marisa Silver The Point by Charles D'Ambrosio Black Dahlia & White Rose by Joyce Carol Oates The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth by William Boyd Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian Sing to It by Amy Hempel Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash My date with Satan by Stacey Richter Middle Men by Jim Gavin Months and Seasons by Christopher Meeks Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine by Kevin Wilson Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy A Kind of Flying by Ron Carlson The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie Birds of America by Lorrie Moore Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau