The Phone Box at the Edge of the World: The moving, unforgettable, Japanese-set international bestseller - inspired by true events

Lovely exploration of the grief of loss and how people deal in difference ways. Nicely conveys the life in Japan as part of the story

Supi

What a beautiful, delicate book about loss, grief, and finding a way to carry on.When Yui loses her mother and young daughter to the 2011 tsunami in Japan, she’s not sure how to find a path through the pain.One day, she hears a man speak of a phone booth on a windy hill overlooking the sea. A phone booth in one of the hardest hit areas. A phone booth with a phone that’s connected to nothing. The grieving are invited to come, to speak to the wind, to share messages with their loved ones.And so Yui makes a pilgrimage to the phone booth. She can’t bring herself to go in — and won’t for years — but she meets a widower there, Takeshi, who comes to speak to the wife he lost, to try to find a way to connect with his daughter who has stopped speaking in the grief of losing her mother.Yui and Takeshi continue to go, meeting others who come to speak to mothers, husbands, children and friends. Sharing their stories.What happens, what unfolds over the course of several years, is both magical and heartbreaking.“Yui came to understand that there was always joy somewhere within unhappiness.”It’s so beautiful. Everyone should read it.

A beautiful novel. Bought it to cope with the grief after losing my mother in March 2023. The writing has a calm, quiet and sensitive vibe while exploring the grief journey with sadness, love and memories.

The Phone at the Edge of the World was beautifully written and shared many of the thoughts and feelings that we experience when dealing with tragedy. I am grateful to the author for her bravery to write about the these experiences.

I always expected this book to be an emotional experience – the true story of the wind phone had already moved me deeply, the whole idea of individuals visiting to speak to those they have lost on a disconnected telephone set in a remote Japanese garden, all those conversations and expressions of love, the goodbyes that never happened.But although there’s much grief and loss, and the stories of people struggling to come to terms with the absence of their loved ones (lost in the most harrowing of circumstances), its real focus is on hope, love, the possibility of finding happiness – and with a beauty and gentleness to the writing that was intensely moving in itself. At the book’s start, I marked sentences and paragraphs I wanted to be able to return to, that captured a moment or a feeling with such delicacy and perfection – but I soon realised I’d be marking every single page.The central story focuses on Yui, grieving the loss of both her mother and young daughter – her grief is visceral, the memories of moments of happiness with her daughter always near the surface, the depth of her anguish causing a physical reaction whenever she catches sight of the sea that tore them apart. It’s also the story of Takeshi, who lost his wife, and now has sole responsibility for his own young daughter who is no longer able to speak following the loss of her mother. The wind phone brings these two damaged people together, allows them to share their grief and make it more manageable – their growing closeness brings them both peace and comfort, but also introduces the possibility of happiness and new love that will help them heal.We discover the stories of others too, drawn to the place of pilgrimage – and I particularly loved finding that those private conversations with lost loved ones often aren’t really about the big things but more about the minutiae of life, the smaller details that they’re no longer able to share.This is a story of hope and healing, the possibility of moving on from tragedy, the bravery needed to grasp new opportunities and leave the fear behind, to understand that moving on is very different from forgetting – it’s emotionally quite perfect, and it’s extraordinarily beautiful. It’s a book filled with moments – some very quiet ones, small things like unexpected laughter, a shared conversation, but some on a much larger canvas. And there are searing and unforgettable images, simply described but immensely powerful, filled with emotion – I particularly liked the repeated use of framing, viewing the spaces between the lines, and the way it can make life more manageable.With Yui’s growing closeness to Takeshi’s daughter, there’s a strong focus on motherhood too – linked with the loss of her own mother, her fear that she’s replacing her lost daughter, that it might not be possible to love another child enough, and that if she does it will somehow diminish her own daughter’s memory.I have to mention the book’s unconventional structure – the chapters that carry the narrative alternate with others that are shorter, sometimes lists prompted by a thought, often mundane, sometimes unexpectedly poignant and emotional – which I really enjoyed. And I also very much enjoyed my introduction to Japanese conventions and culture – very accessible, and entirely fascinating.This book was quite beautiful – yes, an emotional read, and not always an easy one, but overflowing with hope, tremendously uplifting, and totally unforgettable. I recommend it very highly.