Das Leben zerrte an einem Menschen, mit der Zeit entstanden unzählige Risse und Brüche, doch vielleicht waren es ja genau sie, die die Geschichte eines Menschen formten und ihn anspornten, herauszufinden, was als Nächstes geschehen würde.<<

At the heart of the story is love and acceptance. A beautiful friendship blossoms between two users of the phone box, both suffering from huge familial losses. Their grief brings them together, and I appreciated how realistically their relationship developed. I also loved Messina's reflection on step-parents, the role they play and how they must feel. The telephone line won’t carry my voice. So, I let the wind do it, hence the name The Phone of the Wind”. The words of Itaru Sasaki. Wanting to speak to his recently deceased cousin, Itaru instals a telephone box in his garden, which sits at the bottom of the Mountain of the Whale and overlooks the sea off the coast of Otsuki in Japan. Twelve months later in March 2011, Otsuki is decimated by a tsunami which kills 861 people and leaves 421 missing. Itaru, “wanted to offer something for people to connect with those they had lost”. Soon thousands of people begin making the pilgrimage to the Phone Box to speak to their dead. This is the true story upon which Laura Imai Messina’s newly released novel, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is based. I struggled with this book. There was simply some kind of disconnect between me and this book. It's not a bad book, on the contrary, there are some great points, some advice that will make you stop and think about your life. But to me, it was just so slow... There's not really much happening at all. 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.Yui in uno dei suoi tanti viaggi verso il telefono del vento incontra Taseki, che aveva perso la moglie. E così, “il momento in cui si incontravano iniziò ad apparire a entrambi non come il raccogliersi di due sconosciuti in un punto del mondo per poi raggiungerne un altro, bensì come un ritorno. Era lui che tornava a lei. Era lei che tornava a lui.” 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.

Lucrurile care ajung să îți lipsească cel mai mult de la cei care se duc sunt tocmai fixurile lor, fleacurile, lucrurile deranjante.”Yui thinks to herself about how she might have cut herself into two: the world of the living and the world of the dead. How does this separation play out over the course of the novel? The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is powerful and moving, thoughtful and evocative. Messina writes with both clarity and restraint, with the ability to reveal much in a single, compressed paragraph. In an early description of Yui, Messina writes: So, a novel of delicate charm and definitely a book likely to warm the hearts of many readers. True, that whilst this pedantic reader did not feel the metaphorical warmth of its sun, he did see enough of that sun to want to read Messina’s next novel. Her pétillant talent did permeate most of the novel and that’s not a bad reason to read this book and eagerly anticipate her next! I'm struggling to form thoughts to comprehend my feelings towards this book, but I'll try my best to write them down.

Then she meets Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss. What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking... As the pilgrimages to the phone box become a new routine, Yui and Takeshi’s lives are further entwined as they, and the characters they meet, each deal with grief—and with hope—in different ways. Yui and Takeshi both hear the story of a "wind phone", a phone box that has been placed in a garden, on a hill, in the middle of nowhere. It is a place where the grieving can go and talk to their lost loved ones.The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is a poetic novel about a real telephone booth in Otsuchi, Japan, a rural town decimated by the 2011 tsunami. Known as the “Wind Phone,” the disconnected rotary telephone allows grieving family members to speak, in a way, to loved ones who have passed on. Longer chapters are punctuated by shorter ones, some written as lists (“Ten things plus one that Hana and Akiko loved doing together”), others as fragments, a single word, or an in-depth look and what had otherwise seemed like a secondary observation. These ultimately add to the experience: revealing a relationship through quieter moments, serving as a break in the tension or offering a different lens to reflect upon the previous chapter. I loved the thought of a phone box we could all go to and phone our loved ones that have passed away. It's a heartbreaking read but it's also full of hope. I loved both Yui and Takeshi who were believable and I found myself rooting for them. There's quite a lot of tragedy but by the time you reach the end you just feel glad that you've read it. This is a book you will think about for a long time after you've finished it. A story 9f love, loss and grief. The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World has a beautiful premise, but for me the prose fell a little short. I guess I was expecting something like a blend of Sayaka Murata and Elena Ferrante, but the tone is closer to Cecilia Ahern or Marian Keyes. It’s a fine story of losing and finding family, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite live up to the heart-wrenching stories of the real-life Wind Phone. Comparing her work to Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Natsuo Kirino or Kenzaburo Oe, is tonally inappropriate and woefully reductive, yet Messina does echo their prowess at moments, thereby perhaps inviting tempered comparison. I’m paying her a compliment, not disparaging her by faint association. Messina has not, to my mind, joined their ranks, however aspects of her writing are engagingly impressive. Her future novels may well evince the true measure of her talent.