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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Mar 2021, 416 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2022, 416 pages
Book Reviewed by:
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The international bestselling novel sold in 21 countries, about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected "wind" phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami.
When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.
Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around.
Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone booth, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Instead she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of her mother's death.
Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is the signpost pointing to the healing that can come after.
Chapter 3
As she played around with the satnav, Yui tried desperately not to be sick.
The view of the sea had that effect on her for the first few minutes every time she saw it. As though, just by looking at it, the water would rush into her mouth, choking her. So she would quickly stuff something else in her mouth, a square of chocolate or a sweet, and within moments she would be used to the sight and the spasms would ease.
In the month following the tsunami, she had lived on a six-and-a-half-by-ten-foot sheet of canvas in an elementary-school gymnasium with 120 other people. And yet she would never again feel as lonely as she had in that place.
Despite the heavy snowfall, almost unheard of in March, she would go outside as often as she could. She would squeeze through a crack in the wall of the school playground and cling to a tree that seemed firmly rooted to the earth. From there she would contemplate the ocean, now back in its correct position, and the crater of rubble ...
This book is beautifully written! It's easy for the reader to become immersed in the deep feelings and concerns of the many who made the journey to the phone booth (Susanna K). From the beginning I was touched by Laura Imai Messina's poetic manner of writing. She developed her characters in a delightful and loving way. I cared about each one and wanted the best for them. Yui's story is developed in many dimensions: physically, emotionally and spiritually (Mary Anne R). I was moved to tears on more than one occasion. I needed the reminder that after the storm, after the wind, after the loss, there is still room for love, room for hope (Ed R)...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Christy Lefteri, bestselling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo
This beautiful novel tells a story of universal loss and the power of love. It will remain engraved in my heart and mind forever. During these difficult times we face, it addresses questions that we might all have—how to connect with those we have loved and lost and how to allow ourselves to live and to love again. Beautifully written, sensitive and evocative, it paints a picture of an inner and outer world that is infused with both tragedy and hope. It moved me to tears and made me want to speak my own secret thoughts in the phone box at the edge of the world. Absolutely breathtaking and stunning. Clare Macintosh, New York Times bestselling author of I Let You Go and After the End
A message of hope for anyone lost, frightened, or grieving. Beautiful. Joanna Glen, author of The Other Half of Augusta Hope
Before I got started, I already loved the phone booth at the edge of the world. But then I loved everything else. Especially the beautiful prose, powerful but held back, like grief. And the characters—emerging blinking from their tragedies, hurt, and hesitant—but ultimately hopeful. It was a joy to read. Mesmerizing.
In The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World, author Laura Imai Messina crafts a fictional story around a real-life place of public mourning, a phone booth, in the Japanese town of Otsuchi, located about three hours inland in northeastern Japan. A man named Itaru Sasaki built the glass booth with a rotary phone inside after the death of a cousin in 2010. He imagined he could use the phone to call his cousin and it became a means of coping with his grief. Not long after Sasaki's personal loss, tragedy struck on a grander scale when a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeast coast on March 11, 2011, killing over 15,000 people. In the aftermath, Sasaki opened his phone booth to the public as a place of grieving. It's estimated that ...
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