Review: Fault Lines (by Emily Itami)

My Rating:  4.5 stars

 

It's not often that I make the decision to buy a book based on it's cover, but in the case of Emily Itami's debut novel Fault Lines, the cover art – a dark blue image of Tokyo's skyscape at night, overlaid by beautiful pink cherry blossoms -- was so gorgeous that I couldn't resist having it on my bookshelf so I could pull it out and look at it whenever I wanted.  I did end up checking out the plot summary after I bought the book and while it's one I was definitely interested in reading, I couldn't didn't jump in right away due to the LONG list of books I already had lined up that I needed to get to.   So of course, when one of my book clubs chose this book for their April selection, I was more than delighted to be given the excuse to finally get around to reading it (though not without some reservations about whether I would feel the same about the story as I did about the cover).  Now after having finished, I am happy to report that I really enjoyed the story, which I found to be by turns both delightful and thought- provoking.

 

At the center of the story is Mizuki, a Japanese housewife and mother of two young children (a 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son) who, after more than a decade of marriage, has fallen into a resigned complacency of sorts where her days are spent washing the dishes, folding the laundry, taking care of the kids, and being invisible to her extremely hardworking husband who oftentimes can't even be bothered to look at her when he's at home because he is too busy taking care of work matters on his phone.  One day, standing on the balcony of the glamorous high-rise apartment in Tokyo where she lives with her family, Mizuki has the sudden urge to throw herself over the railing.  She doesn't succeed in killing herself of course (not a spoiler), but the incident makes her realize just how mundane and depressing her life has become.  She loves her children deeply, but also yearns for the emotional connection that she used to have with her husband, Tatsuya, back early in their courtship and marriage, when she used to feel seen and appreciated as a partner.  So it is that when she meets Kiyoshi, a charismatic and hugely successful restauranteur, she is drawn to his easy-going nature and they become good friends.  When she's with Kiyoshi, Mizuki is reminded of the person she used to be – funny, charming, and perfectly happy roaming around the city she loves, admiring the sights and sounds, eating good food, and having meaningful conversation with someone who understands her and genuinely cares about her.  But as their relationship deepens, Mizuki finds it more and more difficult to reconcile her devotion to her family and the obligations of motherhood with the happy, carefree existence she has with Kiyoshi. 

 

The entire story is told from Mizuki's first person of view, which I felt worked really well in this instance, as it made her struggles more real and heartfelt.  But I think what helped the most was the author Emily Itami's thoughtful and sensitive, yet entirely realistic portrayal of Mizuki as an ordinary woman struggling with universally relatable issues such as marriage, motherhood, family expectations, societal norms, etc. Itami presents Mizuki in a way that is sincere and honest, helping us understand the character completely through the good moments as well as the bad ones so we can make sense of why Mizuki makes the decisions she does – the effect of this, for me, was that even though I didn't agree with some of those decisions, I couldn't help empathizing with Mizuki and rooting for her along the way. 

Another aspect I really appreciated about the story was how emotionally resonant it ended up being.  I'm not married and I don't have children, yet I was still able to relate to Mizuki's struggle with understanding and reconciling her life choices with the reality of how her life turned out. I resonated especially with Mizuki's conflicting feelings toward her identity and culture — more specifically, feeling bound by the constraints of cultural and societal expectations in her various roles as wife, mother, daughter, friend, etc., yet when the opportunity to be free of these bounds arises, feeling hesitant to take the first step out of fear of what the change might bring.  The beauty of this story is in its nuanced commentary on life and what it means to be a woman in contemporary Asian society.

One thing to note with this story is that, plot-wise, nothing much actually happens — instead, through Mizuki's experiences, we are treated to atmospheric and mesmerizing observations of a city that we get to know intimately by the end of the book. I've always wanted to visit Tokyo (it's one of my bucket list destinations) and after reading this book, that desire has grown even stronger.  Perhaps someday that will become a reality— in the meantime, I don't mind revisiting through the various descriptions in this book.