Cheri's Reviews > The Phone Box at the Edge of the World

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.

A listener calls in when she poses a question to her audience, asking what made it easier for them to get up in the morning and go to bed in the evening when they were grieving. The answers varied, from baking to cleaning, to things associated with fond memories, petting dogs, cats that belonged to others, learning other languages, but it was the final call on that day that was the most notable. The caller was from Iwate, one of the areas most impacted by the earthquake and the tsunami that followed, who begins by saying ’So… there’s this phone booth in a garden, on a hill in the middle of nowhere. The phone isn’t connected to anything, but … I’ll say, Hi, Yoko, how are you? And I feel myself becoming the person I was before...Yesterday evening I was reading my grandson the story of Peter Pan, the little flying boy who loses his shadow and the girl who sews it back onto the soles of his feet. And, you know, I think that’s what we’re doing when we go up that hill...we’re trying to get our shadows back.

Yui’s sorrow, as well as the sorrow of others, permeates these pages, but it’s shared in an almost reverent way as she slowly starts to open up, and share herself with others. When she meets Takeshi, a man whose wife was lost and whose very young daughter no longer speaks, they develop a bond in their grief. They meet every month at Bell Gardia, where Takeshi spends time communing with his dead wife on the phone, and Yui begins to bond with his daughter. They share their grief, and then let go of that grief, a little bit at a time, over time.

’Time may pass, but the memory of the people we’ve loved doesn’t grow old. It is only we who age.’

There is a quiet, somber beauty in these pages. A sense of healing that will come over time, but will always be a part of who they’ll become - of who we’ll become as we all watch the numbers rise of those, perhaps unknown to us, but loved by someone, somewhere, who have lost, or will lose the battle.


Published: 09 Mar 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by ABRAMS / The Overlook Press