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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Yui is intrigued and makes the drive from Tokyo. Along the way, she meets Takeshi, who lost his wife, and whose young daughter, Hana, is mute following her mother’s death, and together they find Bell Gardia, the garden “on a hill in the middle of nowhere” with the wind phone.

On her way, she meets Takeshi, who still has a daughter and a mother, but is mourning a wife lost to cancer. His daughter hasn't spoken since her mother was taken from her. 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. Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of The Overlook 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. I watch mothers in the street, in parks, at the supermarket, and I try to steal their secrets. I want to know how you make a child talk, how you make them feel happy to be alive.” “Oh, but nobody knows that!” Yui would reply instinctively later that evening, turning to look at him. 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. 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 . . . 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.

Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. The blurb reads: “Struggling to come to terms with her grief, she hears a story about a man who has an old disused telephone box 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 box spreads, people travel there from miles around. Soon Yui makes a pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds 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...” Inspired by a real telephone box located in the north-east of Japan comes The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, a novel about Yui, a woman who lost her mother and daughter in the 2011 tsunami and is forced to navigate her grief as well as the life that lies ahead.Yui works at a radio station and hears about a phone box in a garden on a hill in Bell Gardia, where people visit to speak with the departed. “A disconnected phone on which you could talk to your lost loved ones. Could something like that really console people? And what would she say to her mother anyway? What could she possibly say to her little girl? The thought alone made her dizzy.” The voices are carried away on the wind to their loved ones, and while Yui is drawn to the phone box, she never goes inside. She meets Takeshi, a surgeon who recently lost his wife, leaving him with his mother and a three-year-old daughter, Hana, who has stopped speaking. Takeshi talks to his wife through the phone about the life and plans he and his daughter have. What I loved about this book was knowing that it was inspired by a true story. Known as "The Phone of the Wind" in Japan, the phone box sits in the garden of its caretaker in Bell Gardia.