Published by Phoenix Books on 27th May

Available from West End Lane Books, and all Good Bookshops

What They Say

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 it would be more fun to throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband or hanging up laundry.

Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, a voice, 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.

Alluring, compelling, startlingly honest and darkly funny, Fault Lines is a bittersweet love story and a daring exploration of modern relationships from a writer to watch.

What I Say

Now more than ever, today’s mothers are met with a constant onslaught of online perfection and ideals even before most of us have managed to get dressed and eat breakfast. Every day and in numerous ways we are bombarded with different information telling us how we should look after our children and families, all the things we should be doing and lots of things we shouldn’t.

Mitzuki, the protagonist of Emily Itami’s brilliant debut novel Fault Lines, finds herself not only submerged in a world of expectation and comparison, but is also trying to face the cultural expectations that are placed on Mitzuki as a Japanese housewife. In a country with a myriad of customs and social conventions, she is constantly trying to be what everyone else wants her to be, and has learned to put her own needs and desires reluctantly to one side.

The thing is, right from the start, we are absolutely aware that Mitzuki is unhappy with her life, but rationally she knows she shouldn’t be. She has a part time job as a Inter Cultural Consultant, a hardworking husband, two beautiful children and an apartment that is amazing. If I tell you that at the beginning of the story that she botches an attempt to throw herself off her balcony, it is easy to understand that something is very wrong in her world.

Emily’s measured and taut writing means you totally feel the claustrophobic and limited world that Mitzuki is part of. She feels trapped by the world that everyone else tells her she should embrace, and simply being someone’s wife and someone’s mother is not enough. Her identity is being subsumed by everyone else, and she is wondering where Mitzuki is.

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. Passion. Being seen for being Mitzuki in her own right and not as a part of someone else’s life. The tension between them is palpable, and when Mitzuki meets Kiyoshi at a Tokyo Fashion Week Event, she knows that he will eventually be her lover.

Beautifully balanced with the present, we learn about her childhood in a series of interwoven narratives. When Mitzuki was presented with an opportunity to take part in a student exchange to New York, it was her father that convinced her to take part. It meant that a whole new world of spontaneity and opportunity opened up to her, which she loved being part of and presented her with numerous opportunities to pursue a completely different life as a singer. After a time, she missed her family and decided to come back to Japan, but to move out of the family home instead and assert her independence.

When Mitzuki starts to spend time with Kiyoshi, they explore the city together, and she sees the world with fresh eyes. I thought it was poignant how the calmness and dullness of the life she leads at home is contrasted with the vibrancy and cacophony of colours, sights and sounds she is met with when she and Kiyoshi are together. She is now living two lives – one of dutiful wife and mother, and one with Kiyoshi where she can finally be exactly who she wants to be again.

Ultimately, Mitzuki realises that she will have to make some incredibly difficult choices and sacrifices, and which ever ones she makes, it means that she has to compromise again for the sake of her family. You really get a sense of the internal struggle and moral dilemmas that she has to face, and how like numerous women you have to subsume what you really feel in order to maintain the equilibrium of your world.

It’s really hard to tell you all how much I loved Fault Lines, because I want you to read it to see for yourselves. Emily Itami has written an incredible debut novel that works so well because although we may not always condone the choices that Mitzuki makes, we can understand why she does. It may be a short novel, but I loved the fact it tackled so many ideas so perfectly. It talks about motherhood, parenting, marriage, identity, love and passion, but above all Fault Lines was completely and undoubtedly Matzuki’s story, and I thought she was fabulous.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Gigi Woolstencroft and Phoenix Books for my gifted copy.

You can buy your copy of Fault Lines from West End Books here.