This book was both Heartwarming and Heartbreaking, as the blurb suggests. It tells the story of Yui and how she comes to learn of a phone booth that can communicate with loved ones one has lost. It was a very emotional read, and personally, I had to take breaks from it at times because it felt too emotional for me.

I do think this book has value, especially for those that are grieving. And it has fantastic representation for the Asian community. That being said, I do feel there was too much that was told instead of shown. The book just throws information at you, which detracts from overall character development.

A lovely book about how we all deal with grief in different ways. The writing is quiet and soft-feeling, and the characters are made known to the reader even though they themselves do not speak too much. It's a moving story about the after effects of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, and a real place called Bell Gardia, where a phone booth was installed for people to travel and speak with the dead. Very well thought out and described.

The Phone Booth At The Edge Of The World tells the story of Yui and Takeshi and the way they are both grieving the loss of loved ones. After their paths cross , they take a monthly trip to the phone booth together - while Takeshi enters the booth and uses the disconnected phone to talk to his deceased wife, Yui is content to walk the grounds. As the years pass, they become close friends . Eventually, they are able to move on.
The fact that the phone booth actually exists in Japan was of great interest, as well as the rules one must follow to use the phone.

A quietly poignant story about loss and grief, as well as finding the love and joy within suffering. Above all, a story of human relationships, resilience, and compassion. A short read, but one that I'll be thinking about for a long time.

This is a very moving read. For the first part, I felt I was consistently rereading lines and quotes because Yui's story is just so hard hitting. The blurb is 100% accurate that this story is equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming. When you hear/read some of the stories of the people that come to the Wind Phone, it was crushing. I am unsure how accurate some of the stories were or if they were fictional, but one man's story was extremely hard to read. His words on parenting hit close to home.

I was surprised by how much this is a love story. I admit I felt it took away from the story a little bit because I felt it's separate (but not really?) from the first half. (Note: The book is broken into two parts.) At the same time, it was wonderful to seeing the healing in Yui's heart and life take place. I think it was a beautiful ending to her and was especially touched by the last few paragraphs.

The writing style is a unique one. I really love the FEEL of the writing. There is a poetic feel and cadence that is very beautiful. It really captures the emotions of these characters in a way that really tugs the heart strings.

Overall, I'm glad I read this story. I liked how every other chapter had a list of items that related to the chapter before. I like how this story makes you reflect on grief and healing and how people cope differently, but almost the same, but also unique to that said person. (No, I didn't just contradict myself because in light of reading this book, it really does make sense.) I would not say this is a fast read, but it is one that pulls you in sometimes forcibly, making you want to read quickly, and then others times gently, where you slowly ease into these characters lives again.

I would recommend The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World to those who are needing a story to remind them they are not alone, a story that is not only healing for the characters but for the reader, and a story (and love story) of hope.

*(I received an e-copy from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts expressed are my own.)

There are many books written about loss, this one truly touched my heart. It is a beautiful story of grief and life moving forward. Having experienced the unexpected loss of a close loved one, I recognize myself in bits and pieces of the characters.
This book provides support for those who have lost someone in their life. It provides proof that life moves forward even after devastating loss.
Note: There is a glossary at the end of the book for many of the Japanese terms used. As I read an ebook, I was unaware that it was there until I completed the book.

HIGHLIGHTS:
-this book is a phenomenal meditation on grief — although you would expect it to be sad, it shows how relationships can go beyond death and left moments of laughter, tears, and relief
-the short chapters made me read this book essentially in a single day
-Yui and Takeshi’s relationship was so nuanced and felt so carefully planned throughout the whole book.

THOUGHTS:
-the story did not exactly live up to the real life, heart wrenching stories of the wind phone
-I wish that the other minor characters had a deeper character arc, getting to see more of their journeys with their grief

It isn’t often that you find a book that breaks your heart and puts it back together over and over again, but this book does. I was interested in this book because it is set in Japan, and I love Japanese stories after living there for some time in my early 20’s. There is a beauty to the stories and interactions between people, and this book lived up to those beauty standards I had in mind. I cried multiple times throughout this book and connected with the characters on a deep level. I feel like it will be hard for the rest of the books I read this year to live up to this book.

This story was BEAUTIFUL. I have so much respect that the author presented and preserved this spiritual place, the garden and phone booth held as a space for grief, which in itself is a beautiful enough concept and story.
I absolutely loved the character development of the two main characters that meet while traveling to this special place, as well as the awareness that they build in the importance of being trusted with other peoples' stories. I loved so many of the concepts touched on and explored. In her acknowledgments, that author mentions the point of literature being to suggest new ways of being in the world, to connect the here to the there - She nailed it.
"Yui didn't like to talk about her own frailty. But in the end she had accepted it, and that was the start of her path toward taking care of herself again. Acknowledging it helped her connect to the truest part of other people; it was what made it possible to feel close to them, part of their lives...Life decays, countless cracks form over time. But it was those very cracks, the fragility, that determined a person's story; that made them want to keep going, to find out what happens next."

This book is a sigh of lightness amid the chaos of grieving. A reading like never before I had read. How subtle in unraveling the stories of grieving of the characters in the book, and their recovery process. I was wondering if such style comes from Japanese literature aesthetic, but I am not sure, since this a first for me. I know that Japanese culture values ​​discretion, empathy and cordiality, and these are my feelings towards this reading. The book start telling the story of Yui who lost her mother and her daughter during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (Japan). She works in a radio station and first hear about The Wind Phone, at Bell Gardia, when a listener called to share what had helped him recover after losing his wife. Yui then decides to travel to Bell Gardia to see the place in person. Arriving at the town of Otsuchi, she meets Fujita-san, a man who lost his wife to a cancer, and of who Yui becomes very close in the following years and Suzuki-san, the owner of the garden in which the Wind Phone is localized. Both men have important role in Yui’s grieving and recovery process becoming her confidants. The book introduce several other secondary characters with different grieving processes, and the whole story unveils lightly, even in the face of the hurricane of feelings harbored in each character and their losses.
One of the highlights of the writing style in this book, are the very short chapters that highlights some small, maybe unimportant, details of the narrative, but that helps to construct the personally of the characters and their feelings. For me, this is one of the best books I have ever read and for sure the best of the year.

It is a story of loss and grief. That is clear from the start. But really, it is a story about overcoming what feels as insurmountable, and about the importance of faith and connection. We learn about Yei and how she deals with the loss of her mother and daughter, as well as many others who deal with the death of loved ones. Amidst the pain and sadness, there is a great deal of meaning, significance, hope, and love.

This book was beyond my expectations. It tells the sweet story of loss and ways in which people cope. The characters were extremely engaging, and although fictional, felt real especially since it is based around a real location. I also loved the formatting with brief in-between chapters on things like the items in a bento box made for lunch. It added a nice flow to the story. I highly recommend giving this one a read.

Several months ago I heard a podcast about a phonebooth high on a hill in Japan where people go to speak to their loved ones who are gone on a "wind phone". "The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World" is a fictional story about a woman named Yui who lost both her mother and her young daughter in the (true-life) tsunami of 2011 and Takeshi, a man who lost his wife to illness and whose young daughter no longer speaks. The two meet during their first visit to the phone booth, and begin the long journey back to life together. This book is a lovely, quirky, gentle work about overwhelming grief and the hope that somehow breaks through the darkness. Those who love Japan and Japanese culture will enjoy the emersion into the language, customs, and daily practices of the characters. (A detailed glossary adds further explanation.) I read the book on a snowy, melancholy day and enjoyed it thoroughly.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. My thanks to author Laura Imai Messina, publisher Overlook Press, and #NetGalley for this opportunity. #ThePhoneBoothattheEdgeoftheWorld

I absolutely LOVED this book. A strong 5 star read. It was equal parts calming, sad, sweet, tragic, grief-stricken, and hopeful.
This book centers around an empty phone booth in a garden where people can come to “talk” to their loved ones they’ve lost. Yui talks to her mother and child who perished in the March 2011 Tsunami. Takeshi talks to his late wife, while worrying about his daughter who stopped speaking since her mother passed away. This story follows how they each deal with grief in their own way, and how they support each other and learn to move forward and grow closer together through the years. The story of Yui, Takeshi, and everyone else they meet along the way is a special one that I know I will remember for a long time. Highly recommended for everyone!

After losing her young daughter and mother in the tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011, a grieving mother travels to the site of Japan’s famous “Wind Phone” -- a disconnected telephone housed in a phone booth and used to communicate with lost loved ones -- where she meets up with a widower whose young daughter is traumatized by her mother’s death. Their slow-growing friendship helps them cope with their grief as they meet regularly and get to know others who regularly visit to use the phone. Interspersed with their chronological story are sundry lists and “closeups” about what happens in the book, such as: song lists, parenting advice, the number of hugs a person requires each day, the contents of a child’s bento box,
and a sample of what visitors have said on the phone.

At the beginning of the novel, the mother (Yui), who hosts a radio program, asks her audience what has made it easier for them, in the wake of a bereavement, to get up every morning. “What lifts you,” she asks, “when you’re down?” When one of her listeners describes “this phone booth in a garden on a hill in the middle of nowhere,” where when talking on the disconnected phone “your voice is carried away with the wind,” Yui decides to make a pilgrimage to the coastal town of Otsuchi, where the phone booth is located.

Yui herself doesn’t speak on the phone, though. She is mostly our witness to those who do, including Takeshi, the widower she meets there on her first day. Along with those whose loved ones perished in the tsunami, there are “those who lost relatives to illnesses, in car accidents, older people who came to talk to parents who had disappeared in WWII, parents of children who had vanished without a trace.” We hear about an angry father whose son has drowned; a little girl who phones her dog to ask him what the afterlife was like; a high school boy who talks “to his father who was alive and living under the same roof and not with his mother who had been recorded missing”; and many others.

Food plays an important role in the story, whether it’s the chocolate bars Yui relies on to cure her seasickness at the sight of the ocean, the sweets she and the widower’s little girl (Hana) share a love for, or the dinners Takeshi’s late wife let burn when she was angry. So do the many glimpses of Japanese culture, both old and new, from popular songs to myths and festivals like Obon, which celebrates the return of ancestors, welcoming the dead back home. At one point, Takeshi’s mother tells him, referring to his little girl, who has not spoken since her mother’s death from cancer, that “You need practical things to set you right.” Her down-to-earth advice is in keeping with the lesson so charmingly embedded in the book, where attention to daily rituals and traditions and sharing their experiences help ground the characters, giving them ways to put their “hands back on the world” and to find ways to make peace with trauma and loss.

This is heart wrenching beautiful story of unimaginable loss, the grief that haunts you and the slither of hope that people need. Laura Imai Messina has written a story that does a fabulous job of walking that thin line of darkness and light, that anyone who has grieved over the loss of a loved knows all too well and it was one that I could not put down even if it was tearing my heart to pieces. You will fall in love with all the characters and your heart will break with all their stories and you will absolutely love it. Just don’t forget to bring the tissues.

"The Phone Booth At The Edge of the World" examines grief and the beauty of resilience that quietly enters the room with conviction to thrive. On March 11, 2011 Yui loses her mother and daughter from the devastating tsunami that tore Japan apart. Grief became a central part of Yui's life. Words traveled about a phone booth located in the small town of Otsuchi where it carries your voice to your loved lost ones. Soon, Yui travels in search of this phone booth. There, she meets Takeshi and both over time develop strong connection and relationship and the acceptance of moving forward.

Filled with gorgeous and moving prose, Laura Imai Messina paints beautiful imageries with story that immerses us in a dreamlike quality. It spotlights the belief that the living and the dead are intertwined and having the dead be a part of our everyday life. This structure is used in highlighting random objects and lists of vivid memories in connection to their loved lost ones. I really appreciated the snippet of these interludes in the end of every chapters. The snapshots of the random lists and objects was a personal touch in honor and a celebration of the passing. The slow pacing and its rhythm mirrors grief, fragility, and its tenderness. The time it takes in rebuilding one's lives. It is the gentle atmosphere and its delicate dialogues that powerfully embodies the emotional context in conveying the theme of love, loss and healing. A heartbreaking yet uplifting narrative that is thoughtful and poignant that will affect us all in different ways.

Thank you to Net Galley and Abrams/The Overlook Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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.

A listener calls in when she poses a question to her audience, asking what made it easier for them to get up in the morning and go to bed in the evening when they were grieving. The answers varied, from baking to cleaning, to things associated with fond memories, petting dogs, cats that belonged to others, learning other languages, but it was the final call on that day that was the most notable. The caller was from Iwate, one of the areas most impacted by the earthquake and the tsunami that followed, who begins by saying ’So… there’s this phone booth in a garden, on a hill in the middle of nowhere. The phone isn’t connected to anything, but … I’ll say, Hi, Yoko, how are you? And I feel myself becoming the person I was before...Yesterday evening I was reading my grandson the story of Peter Pan, the little flying boy who loses his shadow and the girl who sews it back onto the soles of his feet. And, you know, I think that’s what we’re doing when we go up that hill...we’re trying to get our shadows back.

Yui’s sorrow, as well as the sorrow of others, permeates these pages, but it’s shared in an almost reverent way as she slowly starts to open up, and share herself with others. When she meets Takeshi, a man whose wife was lost and whose very young daughter no longer speaks, they develop a bond in their grief. They meet every month at Bell Gardia, where Takeshi spends time communing with his dead wife on the phone, and Yui begins to bond with his daughter. They share their grief, and then let go of that grief, a little bit at a time, over time.

’Time may pass, but the memory of the people we’ve loved doesn’t grow old. It is only we who age.’

There is a quiet, somber beauty in these pages. A sense of healing that will come over time, but will always be a part of who they’ll become - of who we’ll become as we all watch the numbers rise of those, perhaps unknown to us, but loved by someone, somewhere, who have lost, or will lose the battle.


Pub Date: 09 Mar 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by ABRAMS / The Overlook Press

This is one of those "right book, right time" kind of reads, especially in these days of pandemic. It is a quietly contemplative, hopeful story of family, loss, grief, love and hope. At the heart of this story is a simple premise: that every person will find a place - be it real or somewhere deep within themselves - where they can tend to their emotional pain, loss, suffering and heal their wounds. This place can take on a different meaning and purpose for each person, but the end result is the same: the ability we all have to go from a place of darkness, pain and suffering to one of sunlight, healing and hope. Beautifully written, I love the idea of a Wind Phone to connect with our loved ones, when normal communication channels are not available, or not working. This book, for me anyways, really was a balm for my soul... soothing and nurturing with a calming, meditative pace. A place of solace in these crazy times.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Overlook Press for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

*I was provided an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

The phone booth at the end of the world is in the small town of Otsuchi in northern Japan, one of the areas that was devastated by the 2011 tsunami.

Prior to the tsunami, a resident decided to place an old disconnected rotary phone and booth in his garden to speak to his cousin, who passed away, and his words could be carried away on the wind as he spoke. After the tsunami, word travels through Japan about the wind phone and how it is used by people to talk to their deceased loved ones. Having lost her mother and daughter in the tsunami, Yui decides to visit the phone booth, where she meets Takeshi. Takeshi's wife passed away, and now his 2-year-old daughter has stopped talking. From their first encounter, the pair weave their way into each others' lives in this beautiful story of loss, love, and honoring the past while finding your future.

This story was beautifully written, from the heartbreaking descriptions of the 2011 tsunami to Yui and Takeshi's hopefulness. Broken up with vignettes about different people and things from the book, I found this a delightful read.