Fault Lines: Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa First Novel Award

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Even though I found it hard to really identify with any of the three main characters, I liked this book a lot. Everything we know about love, growing up, parenthood and social constructions will be stirred together. A novel about marriage, motherhood, love, self and the vibrant, surprising city that is modern Tokyo.

Mizuki is a wife, a mother, and a former singer, now leading a quiet life in Tokyo, playing the role she's supposed to play. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.At its core, this is a story of a woman struggling as a wife and mother and trying to find comfort and emotional connection, or even just remember who she was in her pre-marriage life. That is why when she meets restauranteur Kiyoshi by chance when she is working, she feels such an intense chemistry with him that suddenly she understands exactly what has been missing from her life.

I loved visualising the city, which I could clearly because of the authors writing style, this is a beautiful debut, add it to your TBR! I don't understand how the production company can't bother to find a Japanese descent actress/voice actor to read the part? But is the promise of deep and gratifying love enough for Mizuki to risk the stable-if-unsatisfying home life she shares with her husband and children? According to Goodreads, you may like this book if you have read the following: Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, Early Departures by Justin A. Wilson did a decent job but the first third of the audiobook was difficult to understand for me because the narrator often mumbled or slurred her words when the character, Mizuki, was saying something sarcastic or droll - which was often!

This is a book of sharp thoughts with soft edges: Mizuki is a beautifully explored, defined, and refined woman who goes through an incredible metamorphosis of sorts from page one until the novel's unexpected ending, and it's up to you to decide whether the life she chooses suits her best. Itami does a great job of describing the protagonist’s bicultural upbringing too and how it affects her perspective on life. He really listens to her, they banter and laugh easily with one another and she finds that she is not only sexually attracted to this man but she has also become emotionally attached to him which makes her feelings even more complicated. For, in many of her novels, she has a middle-aged upper class woman, who somehow missed her teen rite of passage, come of age after the central experience Siddons creates for her character.

That’s the image I had in my mind while I was immersed in the world of Emily Itami’s beautifully written debut novel. This is among my favorite of her books so far- in part because it explores the idea of who we are when we are not in our regular context.Emily Itame’s transporting debut, Fault Lines, guides readers through the streets of Tokyo from the perspective of Mizuki and her wonderfully honest and often existential thoughts. To access you ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. I don’t think this is going to be for everyone, particularly not those who need something to *happen* in a story, nor for those who will feel frustrated at first-world problems and an upper middle class housewife’s ennui. This whole book felt a bit like I was being given an insider’s glimpse into a culture so foreign to my own via her story, and Itami does a wonderful job blending these types of details into her story in an accessible and seamless way for Western readers.