The Love Con by Seressia Glass is a book I really enjoyed reading that touched my nerdy romantic heart. It has Marvel references, the pure joy behind cosplaying, and elicited so much giddiness as two friends could be something more.
Reflections in Tokyo | Fault Lines by Emily Itami
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Fault Lines by Emily Itami is such a beautiful book. The prose in her writing felt transportive and made me want to visit Tokyo again. It is a simple story that is almost like a collection of honest journal entries documenting the main character's stream of consciousness compiled with all her anxieties, regrets, and hopes.
The story follows Japanese housewife, Mizuki, who has been living day to day as if they were all the same in the beautiful city of Tokyo. She has a good and stable life married to her hardworking husband and raising their two small children. Yet, she has been feeling frustrated lately on the mundanity her life has taken compared to the woman she was before and the risks she used to take. On one rainy evening, she meets restauranteur, Kiyoshi. He is charming, handsome, understanding, and with him, Mizuki's life feels whole again. They soon embark on an affair, but between her new relationship with Kiyoshi and her life at home, Mizuki must make a choice between what she wants to keep and what she must give up.
There is no over the top drama or anything like that in this novel and the real magnitude of the story is everything Mizuki is internally going through. Her affair with Kiyoshi, in my opinion, represents a part of herself she felt she may have lost and still misses, and it’s tied with everything else that has led her to where she is now. Her home life has become dull, but you can tell that as she begins to go back and forth between her affair and her life as a wife and mother that there is an inner conflict because she genuinely loves both her family and Kiyoshi. I also liked the substory about her fear of being trapped on a subway during an earthquake. It can be interpreted to mean several things, one of which I think is tied to her inner reflections about all her life choices about how if she had made a different choice she would have ended up somewhere else.
This book may be short but it is full of many relatable reflections, subtle humor, and heart. It's perfect as it is and may even evoke a feeling of wanderlust to Japan.
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