Fault Lines

A Novel

By: Emily Itami

Narrated by: Lydia Wilson

Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award

"What is the cost of a mother’s desire?... Emily Itami explores this question with wit and poignancy." (New York Times Book Review)

"The perfect marriage of Sally Rooney and early Murakami." (Kathy Wang, author of Impostor Syndrome)

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.

©2021 Emily Itami (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Extremely enjoyable

I will admit, I wasn’t sure I was enjoying the story in the beginning but I committed and I’m so glad I did.

Extremely enjoyable and found myself envisioning scenes with ease. Maybe because I’m a mother as well, but I could relate to the main character so easily. Her struggles, her womanhood, and more.

The narration was phenomenal and I didn’t want it to end. This is one I completely recommend.

It Speaks To Your Soul

This book is definitely not for everyone but if you've felt trapped, unheard, and dare I say unloved in a relationship that you're always wondering "what if?" this will speak to you.
I devoured this book like it was my last meal and felt so heard and seen as if someone was reading my mind. I highly recommend it and am going to buy this book for my friend too.

Funny, realistic

Acerbic observations and surprising juxtapositions. Others have commented on the narrator’s British accent, but I didn’t have a problem with it. I could see it all in my mind’s eye.

Like going back

I just moved back to America from Tokyo, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. It was a lot of fun to hear the narrator describe life in Japan, and the neighborhoods that she explored, being so fresh in my mind. I think anyone who’s spent time in Japan, especially Tokyo, would enjoy the book the same way. I doubly enjoyed it because I am a mother, and my son is the same age as the boy in the book. I obviously couldn’t relate to other aspects of the book, but her narrative I think would be enjoyable by anyone nonetheless. Only weird thing I noted was the sometimes British vocabulary/slang that’s used by the narrator, even though her experience with English was supposed to be from her time in New York, but it didn’t really detract from the story. I recommend!

Recommending to several girlfriends

Beautifully written and narrated. A story that made me want to slow down and enjoy life a little bit more.

I listen to this one often

I listen to this one over and over again because I love the narration so much and I find a story to be very interesting

Audible Version of Book

My biggest complaint is that the book was read by an English/British(?) person, and not a person of Asian descent. As a listener, it made it a little confusing. In today’s world of trying to hear all voices equally, it should definitely have been read by a true voice resembling the characters.

However- she did an excellent job reading the book. I would listen to her again!

Why choose this narrator?

There is absolutely no criticism of the narrator’s performance (outside some brutal intonation mistakes)but why a British voice for a 100% Japanese character that had English ability but American English? I live in Japan and know a myriad of lovely-voiced Japanese women who speak English who could have easily narrated this book for authenticity. It is always a shame when narrators’ voices don’t match the character and worst yet when they butcher the pronunciation of words that belong to, in this case Japanese, the native language. Beautiful story, exquisite, witty prose…just in the wrong accent.

Kind of boring.

This story didn't hold my attention. The characters were just average. It was well written but just boring.

I was so bored

I loved the narrator BUT it’s weird she had a British accent I found it confusing, I kept thinking the main character was actually British and moved to Japan. She did a great job and I’ll seek her out for an other book but she was not the right fit here.

The story was hard to focus on because I was so bored. The premise was great but the execution was poor.