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_askthebookbug 's review for:
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World
by Laura Imai Messina
// The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina. Translated by Lucy Rand.
While I was reading this book, I imagined myself dressing up once a month, preferably on a Sunday and travel to the place where this wind phone is erected. I would then dial a number (I know precisely which one) and wait for my grandfather to answer the phone. We wouldn't talk about anything important but about simple things like his crossword puzzle or Tamil serials. I'd tell him that I'm now married to a kind man, the sort he always imagined me ending up with. I'd ask about his health and tell him that I'd visit him often. There would be no tears. Just a calmness descending on me.
風の電話 (wind phone) is real and it exists in Japan. Laura, who now lives in Japan takes us to this magical disconnected phone booth where people talk to their deceased ones or to the ones who have gone missing. Imagine having a telephone conversation with someone you miss terribly. Your wounds are new so you go there to heal. To grieve and sometimes to say goodbye.
Yui has lost her daughter and mother to the tsunami that happens in 2011. Takeshi has lost his wife to a tumour pretty much the same time. Two strangers with nothing in common end up at Bella Gardia, to use the wind phone. You see a friendship blooming between the two as they make monthly trips to the phone box. Both of them are far from healing, from finding closure but having another person understand each other's losses eases their pain.
Together, they watch many people of all ages seek the phone. Yui's relationship with Takeshi and his daughter evolves over time and they find themselves to be a family. Laura introduces us to a bunch of characters who play minor roles in the story but are needed nevertheless. Her writing is beautiful, thought provoking and very profound. Written originally in Italian, the translation has kept the essence of the book intact.
Inspired by true events, this book turned out to have a soothing effect on me. If you're mourning, think of this phone box. You pick the receiver and put your heart out to the ones you miss. You find closure. You heal.
I recommend this one.
While I was reading this book, I imagined myself dressing up once a month, preferably on a Sunday and travel to the place where this wind phone is erected. I would then dial a number (I know precisely which one) and wait for my grandfather to answer the phone. We wouldn't talk about anything important but about simple things like his crossword puzzle or Tamil serials. I'd tell him that I'm now married to a kind man, the sort he always imagined me ending up with. I'd ask about his health and tell him that I'd visit him often. There would be no tears. Just a calmness descending on me.
風の電話 (wind phone) is real and it exists in Japan. Laura, who now lives in Japan takes us to this magical disconnected phone booth where people talk to their deceased ones or to the ones who have gone missing. Imagine having a telephone conversation with someone you miss terribly. Your wounds are new so you go there to heal. To grieve and sometimes to say goodbye.
Yui has lost her daughter and mother to the tsunami that happens in 2011. Takeshi has lost his wife to a tumour pretty much the same time. Two strangers with nothing in common end up at Bella Gardia, to use the wind phone. You see a friendship blooming between the two as they make monthly trips to the phone box. Both of them are far from healing, from finding closure but having another person understand each other's losses eases their pain.
Together, they watch many people of all ages seek the phone. Yui's relationship with Takeshi and his daughter evolves over time and they find themselves to be a family. Laura introduces us to a bunch of characters who play minor roles in the story but are needed nevertheless. Her writing is beautiful, thought provoking and very profound. Written originally in Italian, the translation has kept the essence of the book intact.
Inspired by true events, this book turned out to have a soothing effect on me. If you're mourning, think of this phone box. You pick the receiver and put your heart out to the ones you miss. You find closure. You heal.
I recommend this one.