The feeling of being connected provides those people with support to find the strength and power to move forward. It is a place where each person can tend to their pain and heal their wounds. The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is powerful and moving, thoughtful and evocative. Messina writes with both clarity and restraint, with the ability to reveal much in a single, compressed paragraph. In an early description of Yui, Messina writes: 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.... Doliul e ceva ce mănânci zi de zi, un sandvici dumicat în deplină tihnă, cu bucățica. Astăzi un căpețel de pâine, un bob de orez uitat, mâine felia galbenă de lămâie. Digestia era înceată.”

Sin duda alguna una conmovedora historia, llena de momentos tristes pero que evocan un sentimiento de esperanza. La autora es muy sensible con las víctimas del tsunami que azotó en Japón el 11 de marzo del 2011. Written in Italian and published as Quel che affidiamo al vento, the English translation was done by Lucy Rand. Rand’s translation is fluent and seamless; she captures the lyricism and meditative quality of the writing with care, a feat made more impressive given that there’s also a distinct Japanese sensibility (the author has been living in Japan for the past 15 years). The RRP is the suggested or Recommended Retail Price of a product, set by the publisher or manufacturer.

Books Multibuys

When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.

I relate these admittedly dusty facts because an acute authorial mind quietly inhabits this deceptively simple book. Messina both understands and cares for Japan and its ancient culture. Her novel is so deeply infused with cultural awareness as to saturate it with authenticity and provide both veracity and artistic realism. This is not a novel penned by a naïve gaijin or foreigner. It is a tender homage to a nation respected, admired and indeed loved. Not gushing, but sincere.I'm struggling to form thoughts to comprehend my feelings towards this book, but I'll try my best to write them down. 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.