Challenging books are similar to clothes that look awesome on the rack and someone else, but feel odd on me. The problem is with the reader, more than anything.

THE LONESOME BODY BUILDER by Yukiko Motoya

Asa Yoneda (Translator), 2018

This is a collection of alien short stories with recurring themes of body transformation, couple relationship, and folklore curses – the幽霊 (Yūrei, ghost in Japanese or yōulíng in Mandarin). The first story didn’t quite click, mainly because I’m so fixated on the idea of gendered beauty and no metaphor life-vest was within grasp for me to appreciate the main (I, a neglected housewife turned bodybuilder). I’m glad I pushed through three more stories  because the fourth – An Exotic Marriage – is truly magnificent. The collection breaks even at this point and the supernatural universe feels more welcoming moving forward.

This fourth story is about a housewife alarmed at the realization that she has grown to look increasingly like her husband. We used to compliment friends back in Taiwan, when they showed up to group dinner with their +1, to have the 夫妻臉(fūqī liǎn, translated to “husband and wife face” in Mandarin). There is the equivalent, tướng phu thê in Vietnamese, or 夫婦の顔 fuufu no kao in Japanese, so it might be an Asian thing. Asking Google about “couple’s facial resemblance”, it seems Eurocentric researchers are also quite interested in this subject. 夫妻臉 means something along the line of “congrats! You have found soul mates” or “you two look like you complement each other / get along well.” Well, this story pushes me to think about the flip side of the coin: Losing oneself in a relationship. I mean, complete incineration. The imagery that Yukiko Motoya uses is two snakes eating each other, until both are gobbled up, vanished to nothingness. The main (I) is plagued with this bleak premonition as she swallows bits of an eel bento, a striking scene.  This story is magical realism is at its best, in less than 100 pages.  

After this transformative peak, I also enjoy How to Burden the Girl (folklore curse remade) and The Women (another short about couple relationship). The rest didn’t quite amount to memorable entertainment, subjectively, because again the problem is with the occupier and not the clothes.   

*The Lonesome Bodybuilder is also released as Picnic in the Storm by Kodansha.

THE ERASERS by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Richard Howard (Translator), 1994

I once read someone shared on a forum how he had despised reading Alain Robbe-Grillet in college but later developed a drastic U-turn, rereading the book at 40 and becoming a full-fledged Robbe-Grillet collector. I house this book on the shelf because that might happen to me some twenty years down the road.

After a couple chapters – especially after the scene where Wallas (one of the narrators, a young inspector) keeps returning to the same intersection on his first morning in this foreign town, my impression is that the book will be much more attractive as a black and white movie. I feel trapped inside Minotaur’s maze, staring at the symbols (the terrorist association, a target killed at exactly 19h30, the eraser shopping). There’s nothing wrong with that, if such a vibe is the unintended consequence of forging a new style (the narrator is no longer omnipotent and the chronology no longer sequential – the Roman Nouveau that strayed from classic narrative). Just a laborious process going from cover to cover that I don’t want to put myself through again (TBD 20 years later).