Delightful . . . At face value, the stories are
fun and funny to read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface. . . .
The writing itself is to be admired . . . Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors
Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselves - and the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentences - are reminiscent, at least to this reader, of
Joy Williams and Rivka Galchen and George Saunders. * Weike Wang, The New York Times Book Review *
Unsettlingly good * The Sunday Times *
Ingenious stories * The Guardian *
These
arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . . . By the first few sentences, you know you're hearing the voice of
a remarkable writer; by the end of [the story] An Exotic Marriage, you're certain that Yukiko
Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you. * Financial Times *
These uncanny stories surprise, unnerve and haunt * Spectator *
Incredibly enjoyable stories * Daily Mail *
11
arresting, hyper-real and delightful stories * Independent i paper *
The stories are
funny and creepy;
they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. . . . The tales boil down to the problem of balancing empathy with self-assertion - of both practicing kindness and expressing your own needs, and all while the people around you are behaving like wraiths or aliens.
Motoya's protagonists feel quietly radical in a literary moment that seems particularly interested in unpacking various forms of narcissism. They treat the importance of others' inner lives as a given. . . . Meanwhile, the reader watches each transformation and stab at connection. She becomes the bulge in the curtain, the shadow on the other side of the glass-the strange one. * The New Yorker *
Motoya is
a writing talent who's not afraid of doing things her own way . . . Mixing the absurd with the psychological, Motoya
takes the reader on flights of fancy that also seem to capture the bizarreness of our own minds, preconceptions and concerns.
If you feel like reading something that little bit different this year then these stories are the perfect place to start. * Stylist magazine *
Channeling the surrealist spirit of Banana Yoshimoto and Aimee Bender, Yukiko Motoya's
trippy debut story collection alchemizes commonplace frustrations - a malfunctioning umbrella in a downpour, a tedious meeting - into
marvelous allegories. . . . Weird and wonderful * Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine *
Charming, bizarre, and uncanny, PICNIC IN THE STORM is Etgar Keret by way of Yoko Ogawa.
I'd follow Yukiko Motoya anywhere she wanted to take me. * Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties *
In 11 short stories, Yukiko Motoya
pulls back the curtain from everyday lives, to reveal that beneath the most mundane lies a world bizarre and alien * Bustle, 1 of 11 Most Anticipated Books *
I wish I could live inside a Yukiko Motoya book. Her
perception and wisdom make the everyday experience feel
magical and weird and the strangest experience seem strangely familiar * Etgar Keret, author of Missing Kissinger *
People around the world have been whispering Motoya's name in my ear. Now she's translated into English! -- Gary Shteyngart
Readers who still enjoy fiction for sheer entertainment should get their hands on these stories. * The Japan Times *
Motoya [has a] gift for making the ordinary magical.
* BBC Culture *
After tasting the delightful surprises in each story in this varied collection, I felt not as though I had passed through a gallery hung with individual talents, but that I had seen at one glance the irrepressible formation of an artist -- Kenzaburo Oe
I could never try to explain Yukiko Motoya's stories. For me, the joy of reading fiction isn't to analyze it, but to feel it in my body. In that sense, her writing offers enormous satisfaction to the sensitive organ inside me that is attuned to the pleasure of reading -- Hiromi Kawakami, author of The Nakano Thrift Shop and Strange Weather in Tokyo
Playful and eerie and utterly enchanting, Yukiko Motoya's stories are like fun-house mazes built to get lost in, where familiar shapes and features from the everyday world are revealed to you as if for the first time, twisted into marvelously odd shapes. These eleven stories possess a mundanely magical logic all their own, surprising and entirely absorbing. -- Alexandra Kleeman
I was impressed by how each story has a different idea, none being mere variations on a theme. It's not a book to consume in one sitting. Read carelessly and you run the risk of ending up flat on your back with no idea of what just hit you. It dawned on me that in these pieces, Motoya, already well-known for theater, was trying to achieve in fiction the gamut of what can't be done on stage. Reading this made me want to sit down and get to work. This is a collection that is provocative to writers as well -- Yasutaka Tsutsui, author of Paprika
