This isn't a love story as such, it's a story about what love is – about how we express it, the nature of it, and in particular the kinds of love beyond the romantic kind. Love for a child, for a parent, for a friend. Love for strangers. For life. It is, obviously, also a story about grief, about mourning, but ultimately every love story is about grief. The problem with happy ever after is that 'ever after' has a tendency to be quite short. It is the nature of life that we will lose the ones we love – or that they will lose us – and the beauty of life lies at least in part with how we deal with that loss.

Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. In parts, it is also a reflection on religion. What it is and what it is for, and what we do instead of it if we have no such beliefs. Maybe it takes an atheist to need a disconnected telephone, where the Buddhist would simply stand in front of the family butsudan and do exactly the same thing. Or an animist/pantheist or whatever else it is I might be to go sit on a beach and speak to the waves.Whenever I read a translation, I am always blown away by the beauty of the words and how they transcend the translation to bring us that beauty in both the language it was written in and the one I am reading it in. This book in particular had so many stunning passages, that despite my overall indifference to its plot, I couldn’t help but fall in love with the writing. Inspired by a real telephone box located in the north-east of Japan comes The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, a novel about Yui, a woman who lost her mother and daughter in the 2011 tsunami and is forced to navigate her grief as well as the life that lies ahead. It is not a tourist attraction. It is an opportunity for visitors to convey their thoughts to their lost loved ones as they work through the grieving process.

In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that followed a 9.0 earthquake, 20,000 lives were lost, and an untold number of families were devastated by the loss, a loss that continues to haunt these families. Yui, a young woman, is one who lost loved ones, family. Her daughter and her mother, both. Her sorrow is palpable, but is shared by the many people who call in to share their stories at the radio station where she works. Each main chapter in the book is separated by concise interluding chapters that act as random fragmented memories. A receipt for a frame, a description of an object, a list of the ten most vivid memories of a person, what Yui’s mother and daughter were wearing on the morning of 11 March 2011, Yui’s favourite Brazilian songs, the original title of the picture book on the afterlife that Yui gave to Hana. The emotional context of the story is very delicately drawn, and the interactions between characters are inviting, with a cautious and fragile dialogue. Incredibly moving. It will break your heart and soothe your soul' - Stacey Halls, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Familiars Spare and poetic, this beautiful book is both a small, quiet love story and a vast expansive meditation on grieving and loss' - HeatA radio host, Yui first heard about the wind phone when she was moderating a discussion on grief. A caller, who had also lost a loved one in the 2011 tsunami, described the phone box with a phone doesn’t work; there’s no connection but the caller says that “your voice is carried away with the wind” and when he speaks to his wife he feels