Kakigori Summer

A wry and tender novel from the author of Fault Lines about three very different sisters reunited in adulthood for one short summer, for readers of Hello Beautiful and Blue Sisters.

"Kakigori Summer is a novel about belonging... I loved retreating into its cocoon of sibling humor as the sisters briefly stepped back to discover their place in it." -- Florence Knapp, author of The Names

Rei, Kiki, and Ai are three sisters divided by distance and circumstance. Ambitious Rei works in finance in London; Kiki is the single mother of a young son, working in a retirement home in Tokyo; and Ai, the youngest, is a peripatetic Japanese music idol. Having lost both parents, one way or another, the sisters rely on each other as family, far-flung as they are.

When Ai is embroiled in a scandal, Rei and Kiki pause their own lives to rescue their baby sister. Over the course of a summer spent in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters will reunite with their sharp-edged grandmother, care for Kiki's irrepressible son, and silently worry about Ai, all while carefully not talking about the circumstances of their mother's death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long...

A transporting and redemptive novel, Kakigori Summer is a hopeful meditation on love and loss, sisterhood and family, and a profound exploration of the stories we tell ourselves about our past that enable us to move forward into the future.

Emily Itami is the author of Fault Lines. She grew up in Tokyo and returned there to live when her children were young. She now lives in London. She has been published widely as a freelance journalist and travel writer.