Fault Lines

Mizuki has the life she once thought she wanted: a hardworking husband, two children, and a beautiful apartment high above Tokyo. But after a decade of marriage, her salaryman husband Tatsuya comes home distant and dismissive, and Mizuki — once a singer who chased a rebellious music career between New York and Tokyo — feels herself dissolving into the roles of wife and mother.

Then she meets Kiyoshi, a charming restaurateur who sees and listens to her in a way no one has for years. Their friendship deepens into something she knows she should resist, and Mizuki finds herself living two lives at once, alive again but pulled between the family she built and the desire that reminds her who she used to be.

Emily Itami's debut is a sharp, funny, and aching portrait of a woman at the fault line of her own life, set against a vividly drawn Tokyo. It asks what a woman owes to her marriage, her children, and herself — and what it costs to want more than the life you chose.