![]() (Several tales allude to “ Kwaidan,” a ghoulish anthology compiled by the folklorist Lafcadio Hearn, in 1904.) (“I want you to come out of that fitting room with a smile on your face!” the attendant chirps, noting the “slurping, roiling kind of sound” emanating from behind the curtain.) The stories are funny and creepy they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. A sales associate at a boutique stays overnight digging up outfits for someone-or some thing-that won’t leave the dressing room. A woman trains as a bodybuilder, adding massive ropes of muscle to her back and shoulders, tripling the width of her neck-and her husband doesn’t notice. Men and women enter into romances with shape-shifters. Many unusual things happen in “ The Lonesome Bodybuilder,” a new collection by the Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. ![]() The tales in “The Lonesome Bodybuilder” boil down to the problem of balancing empathy with self-assertion, all while the people around you are behaving like wraiths or aliens. ![]()
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