Hollow Inside E-Book

Asako Otani

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Hirai is in a rut. Nearing 40, disillusioned by dating and drifting through her office job, she's starting to feel like she might just disappear. When she agrees to move in with her older colleague, Suganuma, people raise eyebrows, but the two women quickly settle into their own soothing domestic routines.Yet escaping the pressures of romantic love isn't easy. When a crisis jolts her back into the world of dating apps, Hirai meets more painfully adequate men and frets about freezing her eggs again. Surely there must be another way to feel less hollow? Witty and deadpan, Hollow Inside is a wonderfully skewed story of two single women trying to carve out their own space in a world of couples.

Leseprobe

123

HOLLOW INSIDE

ASAKO OTANI

Translated from the Japanese by

GINNY TAPLEY TAKEMORI

PUSHKIN PRESS4

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEHOLLOW INSIDEABOUT THE AUTHORJAPANESE FICTION AVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN PRESSCOPYRIGHT

5

HOLLOW INSIDE6

7

SUGANUMA WAS in the living room making dead dogs.

The 3D printer on the cabinet was making a hell of a racket as it squeezed out molten white filament. It was the size of a smallish Buddhist home altar, a bare-bones model with exposed arm and head. It wasn’t so much futuristic as reminiscent of a paper guillotine gathering dust in the back of the school art room.

An H-shaped structure stood atop a base, with a small box-shaped head attached to the crossbar. This head was inching its way from side to side, its motor screaming. A nozzle on the head was extruding filament onto the base, and the figure of a dog was gradually emerging from the feet up. 8

A photograph of the dog stood on the edge of the cabinet. It was already dead. They all were.

Suganuma’s 3D printer was a bit too noisy for home use. At first it had been in her room, but she couldn’t sleep when it was running and had moved it to the cabinet in the corner of the living room. Now, as she stood facing the corner while she operated it, it was as though she too was being driven out of the apartment.

I stood behind her stuffing my breakfast bread roll into my mouth. I didn’t bother about the crumbs falling onto my white blouse. I could gather them up and throw them away when I’d finished. Suganuma had been complaining of deteriorating eyesight lately, and now and then stood back from the machine to observe the details of the emerging figure. Her oversized T-shirt revealed the contours of her skinny body, and all the bumps of her spine stood out starkly when she rounded her back. Her hair, carelessly gathered into a ponytail, was splitting at the ends for lack of moisture and nutrients. From behind, her thin body didn’t look firm and well toned, it just looked frail.

As soon as cheap 3D printers hit the market, Suganuma had bought one, thinking she could make 9some money with it. She had tried various things, but the best-paying job turned out to be making custom dog figurines. She would be sent photos of pet dogs that had died, and would tweak templates of particular breeds to produce models that were the spitting image of those beloved pets. The plain white figures she made would then be sent out for colouring before being delivered to the respective owners. It was cheaper and easier than taxidermy, and popular with owners who couldn’t bear the thought of skinning their pet.

I picked up what looked like a reject figure that was lying on the floor. It was of a chihuahua, hollow inside and surprisingly light. The threadlike filament had become tangled around its body, as though enveloping it in a spider’s web. Could the grieving owner get some measure of comfort from holding this hollow figure made to look like their pet? I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.