No one in Yukiko Motoya’s new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. In the opening story, a meek saleswoman who’s taken up bodybuilding practices flexing, but drops the pose “without having been able to look my mirror self in the eye.” In another, a bored housewife notes that sometimes she “looked in the mirror and was reminded of a blank postcard.” Marriage, she concludes, has made her resemblance to paper even more notable than before. Relationships often cause Motoya’s characters to suffer a loss of identity.

Tortured partnerships are a favorite target for the award-winning Japanese novelist and playwright, whose work has been published in English, and . The 11 short stories in this collection, translated by Asa Yoneda, range in tone from ominous thrillers to lighthearted folktales, but they always seem to return to a depletion of self. The characters featured in them aren’t particularly good at intimacy, even if they live in close proximity to spouses, old friends, and co-workers. Motoya’s prose is earnest and casual, as if the writer is trying to convince a friend of a persistent but invisible pest. In , the pest is always a yawning disconnect between people.