Read a Girl #22: "The Lonesome Bodybuilder", Yukiko Motoya

Are you ready to get weird?

Then this month’s book is for you! Today I bring you “The Lonesome Bodybuilder”, by Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. For a while now I’ve been obsessed with Japanese authors (ICYM: Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen” was featured in an early edition of our newsletter) and the talent they have to embrace the strange.

This is no different with this book, a collection of short stories that will get you saying “Wait, what?” more often than you think. 

Yukiko’s stories are peculiar, to say the least. They deal with the huge disconnect between people in contemporary times. This disconnect becomes more apparent in the stories about romantic relationships, especially between husband and wife - from a woman hiding from her partner the fact that she wants to become a bodybuilder, to a couple made up of a human woman and a husband made of straw. Delightful.

My first book, “a spectacularly sad ending”, is a collection of poetry and prose about heartbreak, loss and survival. It chronicles experiences of love, loss, abuse and grief, and is for anyone who is or ever had to mend a broken heart. It's available as a paperback and also on Kindle. You can get it here.

🎵 This newsletter was written to the sounds of “Changes”, by David Bowie.

We have a playlist with all of the music featured on our newsletters. You can listen to it on Spotify.

I recently realised I’ve never really introduced myself. My bad! 

My name is Renata and I am the Founder and Editor of Read a Girl, a platform aimed at promoting the work of women writers. My background is in journalism and I spent most of my career covering foreign affairs and travelling around looking for good stories to tell. Reading is a very big passion of mine and my favourite authors are Elena Ferrante, J.D. Salinger, Julian Barnes and Sylvia Plath.

You can learn more about me on my website and on this Instagram post.

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