Fault Lines: Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa First Novel Award

Product Information

They all find the strength to change their lives for the better as the story moves along from Palm Springs to L. Mizuki, Itami’s protagonist, lives in Tokyo with her husband, Tatsuya, and their two children, daughter Eri and son Aki.

Itami’s prose is distant, maybe inspired by the character’s remove from her own life — Mizuki is a Japanese woman writing in English, after all. He assures people who are estranged, and those who care about them, that they are not alone and that fissures can be bridged. But in this wise and moving book, Karl Pillemer combines academic rigor and practical advice to show us how to move toward reconciliation.

The second half was much faster and didn't build on much from the first half other than that the marriage was rough. When she sought to find that basic human connection with Kiyoshi, I couldn't help but cheer for her. At 16, Mizuki travels from her rural Japanese province to New York City to spend a year in an American high school, where she learns to be assertive and pursues an interest in music.

For me though, this rang so very true and so many of Mizuki’s thoughts and regrets really resonated with me. Corvus Atlantic’s commercial fiction list which includes women’s, historical, romance, sci-fi, crime and thriller. And so when I saw the book was on Libby and didn’t have too long of a waitlist for the audiobook, so I hopped on it immediately. Skipped so much in that, her sister and daughter disappear from the pages for the last third of the book totally killed the vibe. It is here that Merritt begins to experience an unexplored side of herself and begins a life-altering romance, though it is built on unstable ground.In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. She narrates the story, so we get a good dose of her wants and what disappoints her, though she does love her kids. I happened to be in close proximity to one after my sister wanted to go out one night, so we randomly decided to walk in and just take a look around.