Hollow Inside is the debut novel of Asako Otani (2023, transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori 2026), published by the ever-wonderful Pushkin Press. At only 108 pages it is an accomplished portrayal of a woman trying to find peace within and without.

The narrator is Hirai, self-described as:

“A plain woman just shy of forty in a grey skirt. I had the feeling that by blurring my focus I could be completely assimilated into the jostle of strangers around me on the swaying train. I crossed my eyes slightly and concentrated on erasing my existence.”

We join her when she has been living for four months with Suganuma, slightly older at the age of forty-two. They met at work bonding over their love of the same boyband from their youth.

It is Suganuma who suggests they live together, fed up with the cramped flats and loneliness of living alone.

“As far as I was concerned, my decision to move in with Suganuma meant that I’d given up. A future in which I was married and had children was looking impossible.”

Suganuma is more sanguine, seemingly content in her life choices, and overjoyed at living together as Hirai wryly observes:

“It happened so fast I couldn’t help thinking that if she only handled her work in the same way she’d be able to live in a larger flat of her own.”

Suganuma works mainly from home, 3D printing pets for bereaved relatives. The title comes from the figurines and from Hirai’s identification with them.

Hirai also has no sexual attraction to men and ambivalence towards being a mother, both of which she wishes were different. She feels she doesn’t fit, and limits social contact with colleagues and with her family.

“Every single one of my childhood and college friends now had their own family, and for years now the only contact I had with them was liking each other’s social media posts.”

In a very short space, Otani establishes a sympathetic but not sentimental character study of Hirai, showing her pain and confusion as she struggles to find a place for herself. By the end of the novel, she will made some significant decisions, but the author avoids trite conclusions or neat resolution.

To end, regular readers will know I never shy away from an entirely obvious choice: