Fault Lines Audiobook By Emily Itami cover art

Fault Lines

A Novel

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Fault Lines

By: Emily Itami
Narrated by: Lydia Wilson
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.29

Buy for $24.29

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

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 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Marriage

Dear Listener,

What did I learn about myself while writing Fault Lines?
" Fault Lines is set in Tokyo, and I wrote it after I moved back to London. I loved writing myself back to Japan, and the whole time I was writing I kept thinking of more and more things I wanted to include. It was a kind of intensive daydreaming that was going on at the back of my mind all the time, and I guess one of the things I learned was that there were a lot of details stored there that I don’t think I necessarily would have remembered if I hadn’t been working on the book. It was brilliant fun, retreating into my head and remembering things and then trying to get them down on paper. I also learned that I’m capable of even greater caffeine and biscuit consumption than I previously suspected, and that that is not necessarily a good thing." – Emily Itami, writer of Fault Lines

People who viewed this also viewed...

Kakigori Summer Audiobook By Emily Itami cover art
Kakigori Summer By: Emily Itami
Beautiful Story • Interesting Narrative • Relatable Experiences • Witty Prose • Insightful Perspective
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
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.

Extremely enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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.

It Speaks To Your Soul

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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.

Funny, realistic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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!

Like going back

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautifully written and narrated. A story that made me want to slow down and enjoy life a little bit more.

Recommending to several girlfriends

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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

I listen to this one often

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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!

Audible Version of Book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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.

Why choose this narrator?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This story didn't hold my attention. The characters were just average. It was well written but just boring.

Kind of boring.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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.

I was so bored

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews