Thank you @manilla_press for sending me a free copy of The Phone Box at the Edge of the World to review! This was such a lovely change of pace for me. I rarely read books that are filled with such hope. Although the book tackles grief and loss, Laura Imai Messina infuses it with a profound sense of hope and love.
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Based on a real place in Japan, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is centred around a phone box in a rural Japanese village, where people go to talk to their loved ones who have passed away. In the phone box, they pick up the heavy rotary receiver and whisper messages that are carried off by the wind. I had no idea this was a real place, and I just found the whole idea of it so lovely and sad.
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Messina is Italian, but has lived in Japan for 15 years with her Japanese husband and kids. I believe she is fluent in Japanese but the book is written in and translated from Italian (by Lucy Rand). The prose is simple and unfussy. At first I thought there might be a risk of the sweetness of the novel verging on saccharine, but Messina kept it nicely balanced.
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Each 'proper' chapter of the book is interspersed with a short piece, a fragment of a life lived. A favourite playlist, a list of flowers pressed between the pages of books by a character's mother, an address, a list of utterances whispered into the phone on one day. I found these incredibly touching, as they are the little things that make up a life. Some were quirky and funny and sweet, others were almost unbearably sad.
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At the heart of the story is love and acceptance. A beautiful friendship blossoms between two users of the phone box, both suffering from huge familial losses. Their grief brings them together, and I appreciated how realistically their relationship developed. I also loved Messina's reflection on step-parents, the role they play and how they must feel.
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Quiet, thoughtful and affecting, I think this one will affect everyone differently (always the case with books obviously, but particularly with this one!)