10 years ago an enormous tsunami swept through Japan, leaving death and devastation in its wake. Yui lost her mother and her daughter in the disaster. This is the story of the healing and hope that can follow after such a loss.

For a story dealing with the aftermath of a horrific event, this was a surprisingly mellow book for the most part. In a remote garden is a phone booth. This ”wind phone” is unconnected to anything but the callers’ hearts and wishes for comfort. It offers an avenue for the overwhelming grief that many felt after such a disastrous event. We follow Yui’s grief as she deals with her unfathomable loss. And we meet Takeshi who is another mourning a huge loss, his wife. The two meet, coming together in their grief.

This story follows their developing friendship and relationship. Their lives together show that it is possible to rebuild a life that is different than what came before. But it is no less meaningful or fulfilling for being different. And we see how dealing with grief is not a linear path, constantly moving forward and higher. Grief curls down, arcs sideways, and yes, moves forward.

To be entirely honest, this wind phone, this examination of the humanity and universality of grief is everything that I wanted from The Phone Call from Heaven.

This was such a beautiful, emotional story. I was worried about it breaking me, and I think it did, but it put me back together as well. The phonebooth is an actual phonebooth that sits in Otsuchi Japan. The story that Messina has crafted around this touching location was amazing! I highly recommend this!

My Review: I would be lying if I didn't admit that the cover of this book really caught my attention. I have since seen it in person and it is even more stunning. Luckily, that beautiful cover has a great story on the inside as well. I wasn't sure what to expect from it but it ended up being far more than I could have anticipated. The writing is beautiful and poetic, the subject matter the story revolves around is hard hitting but gentled by the stunning imagery and pacing. Messina does a great job of capturing the pain of grief and the way it connects those left behind. I loved following Yui and Takeshi on their personal journey as well as how a place of comfort brought them together. This was such a beautiful book, one I am very happy I read and an happy to have gracing my shelves.

My Rating: I really enjoyed this book, it was beautifully written and so soothing to read. I loved the imagery and could almost picture it in my mind. I can't help but give this one a rating of Four Paws and a Stump Wag!

Enjoyable book. I read it as background reading for a First Impressions Program we ran on BookBrowse. When a book scores very high marks with our reviewers, in addition to First Impressions, we also feature it as a "This Week's Top Picks" recommendation, which is what we did for Phone Booth:

Review:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/mj270976/the-phone-booth-at-the-edge-of-the-world#reviews
Beyond the Book:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/ref/mj270976/the-phone-booth-at-the-edge-of-the-world#btb

An international bestseller, THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Laura Imai Messina is one of my most favorite books of the year. I honestly had thought it would be a bit morbid, but instead I found Messina's English debut to be a beautiful story of hope that I did not want to end. Messina, who has lived in Japan for 15 years, explains to her readers about the disconnected phone booth that exists in Otsuchi, Japan. Conceived as a means for speaking "on the wind" with deceased loved ones, especially those killed in the March 2011 tsunami, the phone booth sits at the bottom of a garden. It draws people from around the world, including Messina's fictional characters: Yui has lost her daughter and mother and Takeshi has lost his wife. They meet multiple times at the phone booth, gradually learning about each other and rebuilding their lives. This is an emotional story – filled with grief, and growing trust, and dreams, and love. With so much death and despair in the past year, THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD shows that while still remembering loved ones, healing exists; there is promise and potential in the future. Highly recommended.

For more on the phone booth itself and the aftermath of the tsunami (10 years ago today), please see coverage from the BBC, NPR’s This American Life, and Reuters.
LINKS:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-48559139
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go/act-one-0
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversary-telephone/japans-tsunami-survivors-call-lost-loves-on-the-phone-of-the-wind-idUSKCN2AX03J

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami in 2011, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, her life must somehow continue.

One day, Yui hears a story about a man on Whale mountain who has an old telephone booth in his garden with a disconnected phone inside. People start coming from miles around to use this “wind phone” to find comfort and solace by calling their loved ones who have passed away.

Yui, then, decides to visit this phone booth and meets Takeshi, a widower who has lost his wife.

Filled with quotes and written in short and dynamic chapters, we follow Yui as she navigates in a journey of healing and search of hope. The story delivers multiple perspectives of people with shared bond who open up the details of their daily lives with those they have lost.

I found the writing simplistic and would have liked more plot development. Also I wish I had a deeper emotional connection with the characters. That being said, what fascinated me the most was that this “wind phone” is an actual place visited by many all over the world.

Inspired by true events, THE PHONE BOOTH AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD dives into the depths of grief and shows the human longing to keep the people who are no longer with us close to our hearts.

I must admit. I have been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on re: kaze no denwa, the "wind phone." Created by Itaru Sasaki in 2010 when he lost his cousin to cancer and sought a way to stay connected, the phone booth contains a disconnected rotary phone. It sits in a garden. Sasaki opened it to others after the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed almost 20,000 people. Laura Imai Messina's "The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World" tells the story of Yui, a young woman who has lost her mother and young daughter to the tsunami. Yui, experiencing grief as well as survivor's guilt, makes a pilgrimage to the wind phone, where she meets others united in their varying stages and species of loss and grief. I loved the intermittant chapters that tightened the focus on lists and character-specific details. They were brief enough to allow me to pause and digest what the main character/s were experiencing, and they deepened my understanding of the characters. I also loved the aspects of Japanese culture woven throughout the novel.

I recently saw this novel on a Book Riot list: REFLECTIONS AND A READING LIST FOR THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI, AND NUCLEAR DISASTER. It absolutely belongs up front on that list, but it also belongs among lists for books about grief, books about contemporary Japanese culture, and great books in translation (as this was translated from the original Italian).

[Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.]

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is one of the most beautiful stories I have read in quite some time. Laura Imai Messina is a masterful writer who took a topic that is often hidden from the public eye, (grief), and turned it into a captivating and lyrical tale about life and love enduring after a loss.

This book came into my life at such a perfect time - one year since the declaration of a global pandemic which has lead to so much loss of life and lifestyle throughout the world, and approaching the second anniversary of a very profound personal loss. Messina reminds us that grief, while an experience shared by many, is also deeply personal and we must give ourselves permission to grieve in our own way, in our own time even if that grief seems messy or protracted or confusing to others. What struck me was how respectful the characters in the book were of each other's sense of loss and method of grieving. Often, at least in the Western world, there is an expectation that we must "overcome" our grief in a certain prescribed way, within a certain prescribed time for it to be considered "healthy", so that we can "move on".

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World elegantly demonstrates that life and love can continue and happiness can be found along side grief - there is no mutual exclusivity. We can mourn, speak to and honour the individuals we have lost, while still embracing the life and relationship that come "after". Yui, Takeshi and Hana unexpectedly find each other because of the Wind Phone and their bond unfolds beautifully throughout the novel. I think that the Wind Phone at Bell Gardia is such an incredible idea and I so appreciate Messina sharing it with us through her novel.

I highly recommend this novel, I think it has become one of my new favourites! Thank you to Net Galley and The Overlook Press for providing and eARC of this book for review!

The Phone Booth At The Edge Of The World by Laura Imai Messina. I loved this book, but I do have to say that I struggled getting through it as well. I think it probably is because it was a book that had been translated. It it a beautiful book based on a true story.

The Phone Booth on the Edge of the World is in Japan. You can see it today, though it is not a tourist attraction. Don't bring your camera or go there unless you have a need to be there. The phone in this booth doesn't work in the traditional sense, but it does work in other ways.

In March of 2011 a tsunami hit Japan and destroyed so many lives. Yui, one of the main characters in this book, lost her mother and her daughter. They were later found wrapped in each others arms, dead from the tsunami. Yui is struggling. She goes to work every day, but she is haunted by her loss. She later hears about a man who has an old phone booth in his garden. People who have lost their love ones go to this phone booth and talk to them. Many have come to this phone to come to terms with their grief. Yui makes the trip to the phone, but instead of using the phone, she finds Takeshi. Takeshi wife died in the tsunami and his daughter has stopped talking. Yui and Takeshi make many trips to the phone and eventually they realize they love each other. It is a sweet emotional story and definitely worth the read. It was in the news recently and you can Google it to read about The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World. 3.5⭐

The phone in my picture was the phone in my grandparents house and a couple of years ago I brought it home with me. At first I thought it was just a cool piece of history, but now I believe it has a different meaning for me.

Thank you to Abrams Books, The Overlook Press and Laura Imai Messina for the copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

It was definitely not in my plan but I finished reading this book about 4 days before my mom passed away in January. It is hard to believe that a month has gone by already. In my opinion, the phone booth at the edge of the world will probably not trigger any grief beyond what people already feel. The book is really lovely.

Yui learns about an old telephone booth in that a man has set up in his garden. I imagine that it is a really beautiful garden. People begin to travel to the phone booth to talk to their loved ones that have died during the tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011.

Yui lost her mother and daughter during the tsunami. After learning about the telephone booth, she travels to the garden. She cannot quite pick up the phone but the garden and the phone booth give her a small amount of comfort. While visiting the garden, Yui meets Takeshi and his daughter. The daughter has not spoken since losing her mother. Takeshi is hoping that his daughter will speak to her mother on the phone.

Yui, Takeshi and his daughter begin to meet on a regular basis at the phone booth. They are all making small steps to healing. It may seem silly to some people to visit a phone booth that is so far from everything. Maybe the distance from their current homes is helpful.

If you are ready to read a book that deals with dealing with grief and loss, then this book would be an excellent choice. I cannot think of anyone that would not like this book. It’s just so beautiful and hopeful.

I don’t have a phone booth but I do have an old phone that I could use to talk to my mom. It’s just nice to know that it’s there.

What a remarkable story about finding one’s way through grief and the tremendous healing that grows through companionship and love. A book beautifully poetic in its writing, and deals with loss in a hopeful way without dragging the reader down into the darker emotions. One can feel the healing Yui and Takeshi experience with each other through their cathartic visits to the phone booth. Brought together by shared but not common tragedies, these two characters grieve and mend together. The author takes the a common theme and finds a way to engage the reader into healing with and through the characters in their story. A future classic in literature.

What can you say about a book that is, quite simply, one of the most gorgeous reads you have had in a long time [and one that would not let you power-read through it]? How can one express what it made them feel, how it turned them inside out, made them cry [in almost every single chapter] and ultimately brought hope long thought lost without giving anything away?

I cannot.

This is a book that a person has to experience for themselves, and that being said, this book will also be very different for each person who reads it. It is a book about grief, and how it is not linear and how it is absolutely different for everyone, it is about healing, love, family and again, ultimately hope and each person who reads this will have a different reaction than the person who recommended or gave the book to them [and this is absolutely a book I am going to be recommending to people and one I am going to shove into people's hands and demand that they read it immediately], and that is okay. I think that should I revisit this book in a year or two or three, I will quite possibly have a different experience than the one I just had, and that is totally okay and should be expected. No one stays the same, no one's grief stays the same and everyone heals, though at the pace they need to [and not what society says, because in my opinion, society and all their bullshit can go hang] and they can read this and realize they will come out on the other side and be okay. You will never ever be the same and there will always be that spot for the person you have love and lost, but you can be okay. And from someone who has thought that hope was not something they could ever have again, that is saying a lot. I think I can believe in hope again, and I truly never thought I would ever again.

Thank you to NetGalley, Laura Imai Messina, Lucy Rand [Translator] and ABRAMS/The Overlook Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a soul searching book is the effects of the March 11, 2011 tsunami that hit Japan. After the loss of her Mother and Daughter, Yui discovers the phone booth in the garden Bell Gardia. The phone booth is not connected to anything but the wind sends your communications out to be reached by your hearts desire. There Yuimeets Takeshi who has lost his wife who wants to go to Bell Gardia to send his messages; they discover loss can also lead to receiving something new. They find that through others loss theirs seems to be included and not such a life closure but while not the same is still life.
Thank you NetGalley and The Overlook Press for an advance copy of this book.
@Netgalley @TheOverlookPress @ThePhoneBoothattheEdgeoftheWorld

A Trace of Emotional Healing

I do remember reading and looking at photos of the March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan. The shock was devastating and unexpected. The experts did not predict the tsunami would cause this catastrophic earthquake.

It was an unbearable tragedy. Those that lost parents, siblings and children experience no emotions or deep sorrow that cannot be mended.

The main character Is Yui, who lost her beloved daughter and mother who was incidentally caring for her at the time. This story (and title) refers to a disconnected phone box in the countryside of Japan where the bereaved, of all ages, go to speak to the dead. The phone does not work, but yet the mourners pick up the receiver and speak to their lost loved ones about anything.

Yui is emotionally unable to use this phone. One day she meets Takeshi, a grieving husband whose surviving daughter has stopped talking since the loss of her mother.

Emotional healing, if it can be obtained, seems to be the theme of this book. We have read many books and articles about this topic. However, the Japanese culture and the format of this book is at the forefront. There are minimalist chapters, often with illustrations. These very short segments take the reader through their grieving process. They felt like essays to me, one after the other, some with unbearable loss and pain and some with a glint of survival and hints of nothingness.

My gratitude to NetGalley and The Overlook Press for the opportunity to read this pre-published book for an honest review.

There is a phone booth at the edge of the world in Otsuchi, Japan. People come from all over to speak into the wind to their deceased loved ones. This fictional story is based on this very real place. After losing my dad very suddenly and unexpectedly just 4 months ago, I thought this book would be cathartic, but I found it to be pretty boring and full of wasted pages. Interwoven with the story of 2 strangers who met at the phone booth, are pages that seem to serve no purpose other than to just make the book longer. They are literally between every chapter. I kept hoping the story would touch my heart at some point, but it never did.

Tens of thousands of lives were lost in the tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011. This left many survivors reeling with grief over those who were lost. Many found solace by speaking to their lost loved ones via a remote disconnected phone booth. This "wind phone" became a place people made pilgrimages to in order to deal with their grief.

In this novel, Laura Imai Messina, brings to life several characters dealing with grief after the tsunami. Yui lost her mother and daughter in the tsunami. Her sorrow overtakes her life. Yui learns about the phone booth from someone who calls into her radio show. She journeys to the wind phone but can't make herself speak into it. There she meets Takeshi, who lost his wife in the tsunami. His young daughter hasn't spoken since her mother died. Yui and Takeshi bond over their losses and work through their grief together.

The story was sad yet heartwarming. The narrative was broken up into short chapters and vignettes. Some of these are recollections or lists, such as the playlist of songs Yui played on her radio broadcast on a certain day. These short chapters are like brief glimpses into Yui's sorrow and how she is dealing with it. I loved her interactions with Takeshi's daughter. The book shows how those impacted by a similar experience can help each other through it. Overall, the writing was peaceful, introspective, and poignant.

“We need to possess joy in abundance before we can bestow it upon somebody else.”

“The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World” is a novel about grief and how each person grieves differently and copes differently. After a damaging tsunami in 2011, many people lose loved ones and are left to pick up the pieces of a ravaged city in Japan. Yui hosts a radio show and one day the topic of grief comes up. A caller comes in to explain a phone booth that people have been using as a coping mechanism to talk to their lost loved ones. Yui is intrigued and makes the trek to find this phone booth and once she’s there her whole life changes.

This story was such a breath of fresh air. It is literary fiction and it is a translated novel. I thought that Lucy Rand did such a beautiful job of translating the poetic writings of Laura Imai Messina. This book really focuses on Yui’s loss and watching those who come to the phone booth come to terms with their loss. This book is not meant to be shocking or surprising or have any twists, and so it is simply a journey through the many facets of grief.

Thank you, Laura Imai Messina, The Overlook Press, and NetGalley, for the ARC.

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina is a novel about Yui, a woman who is battling immense grief after the loss of both her mother and daughter in a devastating tsunami. Yui views her life as a before and after the tsunami and understandably is struggling with coping in the aftermath. However, an old telephone booth in the garden of a stranger draws Yui to travel to this tollbooth as it promises the ability to speak to dead loved ones. When Yui arrives at the phone booth she meets Takeshi, a man struggling with the death of his wife and his daughter's silence after her death. During this encounter, Yui and Takeshi try to come to terms about their grief and what it means to move on.

This book was absolutely lovely, heartbreaking, and also somehow surprising. The pacing of this book is slower, gently pulling you into the novel and getting closer to the characters. There is so much time that spans in this novel despite its shorter length, yet somehow there is so much depth to the book. The companionship that developed between Yui and Takeshi was sweet and gradual that just naturally unfolded in front of you. The little tidbits that chronicled each year added a little something special and felt nostalgic. I'm not sure what it is but this book felt so heart wrenching yet heartwarming in a quiet way which sound like a contradiction but I do not know how else to describe it. I think additional length would have pushed this even a bit further since I felt like I could stay longer in this world and smooth the transition in the relationship a bit more. Overall I really enjoyed this novel and am looking forward to other books from this author!

Many thanks to the publisher ABRAMS - The Overlook Press and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This is going to be one of those books that stay with me- the ones I think about, and try to press onto my friends; the one I will always hold up as comparison when I search for books (you know the one- you are always thinking “I want to find another book like that”). Seriously, I was twenty percent into an eARC (shout out to Netgalley and Abrams books for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!) when I started looking for it to buy. I found a previously published translation on Book Depository and have pored over it for the last two weeks. All pics and quotes will be coming from this edition, but I did check that they were the same in both books. I just… I had to own it. I could not wait. I wanted to touch it and pore over it before offering it to my friend to read (isn’t that what everyone else does with hard copies of books any more?).

You may be asking, why are you so obsessed with this book? I love the characters, their real emotions and their growth. I love how grief and pain is depicted here, and that there is no shaming for any coping mechanism. The premise- a place where you can go to talk to those you lost- intrigued me (even more so considering this place does in fact exist). I love that it doesn’t shy away from the pain, but also shows healing, joy, new beginnings. Lastly, I love that there were little bits to break up the heavy- a list of the songs Yui played the day she found out about the phone booth, the advice Takeshi gets about raising Hannah… interesting tidbits like this that don’t so much break the flow of the story but allow for a breathe. For me, this is a five star book. If I could give more I would.

As far as adult content goes- there are some heavy subjects: suicide, death, survivor’s guilt… it might be hard for a younger reader to handle it all. On the other hand, there’s very little foul language, no excessive violence, no substance abuse, I would have given this to my niece at thirteen- though she might have needed to look up some of the vocabulary. I see no reason why this couldn’t be read at any age.

I knew this story would be sad, but I didn't expect it to be so tender and beautiful. This is a book you keep on your shelf as a reminder that even after the darkest night, the sun will rise. I love the way this book highlights and focuses on similarities of the human experience. Each of the characters were affected by the never ending pain and grief of losing a loved one. Although they felt and experienced it differently they were all able to connect with and support each other in a deeply moving way. Watching these characters unpack their grief and continue to move forward with their lives was heartwarming.

After I finished this novel I did some research on the wind phone and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami after which this book was inspired. The wind phone was created by Itaru Sasaki after losing a cousin in 2010. "Because my thoughts couldn’t be relayed over a regular phone line" he said, "I wanted them to be carried on the wind.” After the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Sasaki opened up to the public. Over 10 000 people have made the pilgrimage to facilitate their own healing at the wind phone.

This book is lovely and the authors note at the end was touching and thoughtful. The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is wonderfully comforting read for the soul..