Fault Lines, Emily Itami
“My life’s work, my greatest loves, orchestrators of total psychological trauma and everyday destruction.”
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.
As a Japanese housewife with a hardworking husband, two young children, and a beautiful apartment, Mizuki is living an existence that many would envy, and yet it’s the very trappings of domesticity that are causing her to consider whether it might be more fun to throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening hanging up laundry.
The seismic shift in the novel occurs with the introduction of Kiyoshi, a charming entrepreneur and “the first person in years who thought about the answers to the questions I asked him and looked right at me when he replied.” What follows is a narrative that shifts between a hedonistic affair that plays out among the backdrop of Tokyo’s most alluring and evocative corners, and the familiarity of a life that offers safety, comfort and dissatisfaction.
Itame explores a woman’s loss of identity and purpose with humour and honesty, subtly exposing the cracks that occur in the societal roles we so often fall into with little thought – until a fault line appears and we choose to break away.
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