Reviewed by Emma Crowley
We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .
On a windy hill in Japan, in a garden overlooking the sea stands a disused phone box. For years, people have travelled to visit the phone box, to pick up the receiver and speak into the wind: to pass their messages to loved ones no longer with us.
When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she is plunged into despair and wonders how she will ever carry on. One day she hears of the phone box, and decides to make her own pilgrimage there, to speak once more to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find . . .
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...
Many thanks to Zaffre Books for my copy of The Phone Box at the Edge of the World to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina has a very unique concept at its centre. A special telephone box is situated at Bell Gardia, a special garden far away from Toyko. What sets this telephone box apart from all the rest is that it is not connected to any landlines but instead serves a very rare and exceptional purpose, here people come from far and wide to make a ‘call’ to their lost loved ones. They can enter the box, pick up the receiver and just talk. Their words, feelings and expressions float away on the wind in the hopes that the ones they lost and so desperately wish to have back will hear what they have to say.
This telephone box is an exclusive and rare thing aimed at offering solace, comfort and a lifeline to those left behind. The people who use it are mired in grief, lost and all alone as the burden of their sadness weighs heavily. As the book opens, our main character Yui is battling to save the box as a typhoon is about to hit. Her daughter and mother were lost to the sea in the tsunami of 2011 and she does not wish this tentative connection to them to be lost forever. We are then taken back in time to see how she reached this point.
The Telephone Box at the Edge of the World is a real literary novel and not one I would be used to reading. I would usually expect to read a book and take things as they are stated and not to have to read too much into or search for the hidden meaning behind words, sentences and entire paragraphs. Here this is what I had to do. At some points, I found myself having to stop and contemplate what was being said, what context it was being used in and what the author was trying to say. This didn’t detract from the overall flow of the story, in fact I flew through this in two sittings. It was very easy to read through the pages so much so that at some points I found myself having read several pages and I couldn’t recollect what had been said. Whereas at other junctures I stopped and contemplated.
I could see what the author was trying to achieve in writing this story and for the most part she did succeed. But on the other hand, I found it all just too fast and it went off into irrelevant tangents that had no significant meaning or forbearing on the story. After every chapter was a either a list or some other element based on what had occurred in the previous chapter. Be it what Yui and Hanna bought at a shop or the details of a book read to Hanna. Some people will love the inclusion of this element in the book but for me honestly I found it distracting and I just wanted to get back to the central story despite the briefness of these interludes. I have no doubt that other readers will find these respites fascinating and worthwhile.
Some may feel a book about grief and loss would be all doom and gloom and would be a very heavy read. Having experienced my own personal loss of a very close loved one I admit I was slightly apprehensive about reading this story but I didn’t find it heavy at all. Instead moments of hope, understanding, inspiration and acceptance shine through at just the right moments despite the speed of the overall plot. Yui carries a deep abyss inside her ever since the devastating consequences of the tsunami. When she hears of the box she believes it may help her as she can’t quite believe that the pain she is experiencing is what will give her future life depth.
Yui is not up to the challenges life has set her and when she arrives at Bell Gardia and sees a man about to visit an instant connection is struck up and a friendship is formed. Takeshi visits the telephone so he can talk to his wife who has passed on, leaving him as a single father to Hanna who had not spoken since her mother had passed away. He is struggling and looking for answers and wondering how he can keep going and help Hanna? How can he manage his grief and find comfort as everybody’s grief at first looks the same but then dig a little deeper and you will find it is ultimately unique.
For the most part Yui does not use the telephone to show how she feels, rather she wanders the surrounding gardens as Takeshi expresses how he is feeling and seeks advice and his words float away on the wind to reach whatever destination our loved ones venture to after they have passed. The entire time you are reading through the story you question why Yui can’t pick up the receiver and talk? What is stopping her? What is she afraid of? Is she not meant to speak and instead something else drew her to this place? Perhaps in order to find Takeshi? It’s difficult to establish a relationship with our loved ones after they have gone but the telephone provides that connection if only Yui can establish it.
The years pass and the story flows very quickly. Yui’s fragility and the cracks in her life expose themselves at regular intervals. She gets closer to Takeshi but the concept of becoming a mother again, to Hanna this time, provide many conundrums and difficulties for her. Guilt at moving on when her mother and daughter can’t and trying to accept a possible new life for her are hard to comprehend. She takes a very long time to be ready for joy again. It’s like pain is her new comfort zone that she can’t break free from but you question whether she would prefer to remain in this state forever. The latter half of the book became the story of Yui and Takehshi’s relationship and we come to understand why Yui went to Bell Gardia as the typhoon hit land. Things made a lot more sense and without this significant event I don’t think we would have reached the final crucial point of the story.
Perhaps the most profound statement came in the end notes. Is the wind phone a metaphor that suggests how precious it is to hold on tight to joy as well as pain, that even when we are confronted by the subtractions, the things that life takes from us, we have to open ourselves up to the many additions it can offer too? There is certainly plenty of food for thought in those words.
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World was a mixed bag for me. I didn’t love it nor did I hate it rather I sit firmly in the middle with regard to my overall opinion. I understand the concept and the meaning behind it all but it didn’t really hit me where I know it was meant to perhaps that’s because honestly there were points where nothing really happened at all yet I would have read several chapters. My attention wandered at times and that shouldn’t happen with a truly absorbing book. Saying that I am glad I read it and discovered the memorable and unusual telephone box that does so much good work for so many at a time when they need it most.
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