Fault Lines ⭑⭑⭑⭑

Genre: Literary Fiction

US Publication: September 7, 2021

Print: 224 pages

Audio: 5 hours 23 minutes

Confetti Rating: 4 stars

REVIEW:

Picture your run-of-the-mill, stereotypical, middle-aged man pulling up to a stoplight in his red Corvette convertible with one hand on the wheel and one arm around his trophy mistress. Then picture Mizuki, the female main character in Fault Lines, pulling up beside him, revving her engine, and running him off the road when the light turns green.

That’s the image I had in my mind while I was immersed in the world of Emily Itami’s beautifully written debut novel. Her “heroine,” Mizuki, is a Japanese woman whose dream of being a professional singer was abandoned so she could marry and raise children with a stoic-yet-hardworking husband. While not quite middle-aged, she meets her crisis in the form of an irresistible man named Kiyoshi. What follows is real, relatable and raw.

Fault Lines is a slim little novel - a mere 224 pages. If you’re interested in mothers’ perspectives, Japanese culture, or just discovering a new literary talent, it’s well worth the short time investment to read this story. I opted to listen to the audiobook that clocks in at 5:23. The narration is solid, yet it’s a bit of a head-scratcher that it’s performed by an English white woman. Such a shame that a character who’s rediscovering her voice is voiced by one unlike her own.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Combining the incisive intimacy of Sally Rooney with the sharp wit of Helen Fielding, a compulsively readable and astonishingly relatable debut novel about marriage, motherhood, love, self and the vibrant, surprising city that is modern Tokyo.

Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.

Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. But the further she falls into their relationship, the clearer it becomes that she is living two lives — and in the end, we can choose only one.

Funny, provocative, and startlingly honest, Fault Lines is for anyone who has ever looked in the mirror and asked, who am I and how did I get here? A bittersweet love story and a piercing portrait of female identity, it introduces Emily Itami as a debut novelist with astounding resonance and wit.