The Phone Box at the Edge of the World: The most moving, unforgettable book you will read, inspired by true events

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And if she had said it out loud, Takeshi would have told her the truth. That love is a miracle. Even the second time around. Even when it comes to you by mistake.” 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. A 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 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. 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.

Incredibly moving. It will break your heart and soothe your soul' - Stacey Halls, Sunday Times bestselling author of The FamiliarsBetween chapters that follow Yui’s story and the experiences of other grieving people who visit the phone booth, author Laura Imai Messina intersperses bite-size sections that are almost like poems. They have titles such as “Parts of Yui’s Body She Entrusted to Others Over the Years” and “Two Things Yui Discovered After Googling ‘Hug’ the Next Day.” These snippets are lovely breathers, a chance for the reader to marvel at the tiny details that make up a life. I enjoyed the details added at the end of each chapter to give extra depth to the topic. Some of the addendums were lighthearted whereas others were really sombre and sad.

A poignant, atmospheric novel dealing with love, coming to terms with loss and the restoration of one's self' - Daily Mail The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World is a sensitive and compassionate look at grief that’s full of quiet moments of wisdom. It really makes you appreciate what you have. Laura Imai Messina has created a quiet, emotional story that’s based on real-life events. This is not a book you rush through, it’s a book to savour. The plot is subtle and delicate and the slow pace allows the reader to embrace the beautiful, often poetic, prose. The Phone Box at the End of the World, which has already sold foreign language rights into 17 territories, is about the pilgrimage of a bereaved Japanese woman to a telephone box for the dead in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami. It was inspired by a real phone box for the dead, that exists at the bottom of a garden in a small town in Northern Japan, Otsuchi, to which people travel from miles around to call those they have lost.Bonnier Books UK has announced a novel inspired by the true story of Japan's2011 tsunami for its new literary imprint, Manilla Press. Depending on what you were told at the information center, you belonged to one of two groups: those who knew and those who were waiting. Sometimes people would go on to another shelter, where they'd find the people they had been waiting for waiting for them.

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. While this is a story about grief, it isn’t a depressing read. Yui’s sorrow, along with the sorrow of all the visitors to the phone, is palpable yet also intertwined with hope and forgiveness. Yui has faced unimaginable tragedy and yet her compassion and resilience remain. To end on a positive note, there were a few things I did appreciate about The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World. I felt I had a deeper understanding of how the tsunami effected the people of Japan in the short or long term on a practical and emotional level. I also enjoyed immersing myself in the Japanese culture as Messina imparted the knowledge she has gained from living in Japan with her husband in an easy manner. 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:Both Yui and Takeshi independently set out to find the phone box in the town of Bell Gardia. They both get lost and in the process end up bumping into each other. They then make the journey to the phone box together. The novel will publish on 25th June 2020 as one of the fiction launch titles of Bonnier Books UK’s new literary fiction and non-fiction imprint, Manilla Press. 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.