The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, Laura Imai Messina

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 You loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will carry on. One day she hears of the phone box and decides to make her own pilgramage there, to speak to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find. Then Yui meets Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss…

A poignant tale about love, grief and finding the words to express yourself. The phone box might first appear to be a whimsical device contructed to explore the conversations we want to have with those we have loved and lost, but it is, in fact, a story inspired by the Wind Phone, a real phone box in a real garden, offered to a community of people who need it that has become a place of pilgrimage. It is a sensitively told, heart-warming story about love and about hope.