A novel of well realized interiority, where we spend most of our time in the head of a married woman in Japan who feels trapped by her domestic existence. A rift has formed between her husband and most of her time is spent looking after the kids; a job the husband devalues while he works 15 hour days.

When the relationship is pushed repeatedly, after numerous cyclical arguments and a constant ineffective communication ritual fails—she allows herself time and space to expand her life in an additional direction: A new relationship with a man who pursues her. Unsure wether it is a friendship or affair, the mere possibility of the new allows her to rediscover who she is from an outsider’s perspective. Subsequently surfacing thoughts of her past.

This was smart in a few ways. The prose captured her emotions well, and the interactions—the perspicacity around the foreign substance of a new individual orbiting your life—were Rooneyesque, at times. I think it’s very astute in depicting how much we become the reflection shown to us by the people we have entrenched our lives. There is a dire need for people in different roles. To be always a known quantity and no more, wife, mother, etc. makes a person believe that there was never anything to their identity except those roles because that is the only feedback they ever receive.

The fault lines is a very apt metaphor, then. Physically, she (and everyone) is terrified the next earthquake will end her existence. Emotionally, the damage of repressing who she is for so long has caused immense distress, and her own earthquake, though tumultuous and painful, also enables her to feel something different, and to use that feedback to finally understand who she is and where she is now, in her life.