Japan tsunami aftermath provides the setting for this quiet, wise novel

In the wake of Japan’s 2011 tsunami, from city to town along the northeast coast, “there were hundreds of astonishing stories to tell,” writes Laura Imai Messina.

“The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World” is one such astonishment. And while Imai Messina’s quiet, contemplative, and gripping tale is fiction, the story ultimately has its feet – and its heart – planted firmly in reality.

The titular phone booth perches in a serene cliffside garden named Bell Gardia overlooking the ocean in northern Japan. Tended by a generous elder named only as Suzuki-san, it offers visitors a place to speak without inhibition to lost partners, children, parents, and companions. Such a spot exists, according to the book’s preamble, in Iwate Prefecture, where it was created following the disaster, which marks its 10-year anniversary on March 11.

Imai Messina’s story – musing on grief, hope, and joy – comes, then, at the perfect moment.

The novel centers on Yui, a radio broadcaster in Tokyo overwhelmed by the loss of her daughter and mother to the tsunami. More than a year has passed, yet days blur with her sorrow: “Every week had been a struggle; every month simply hours stacked up in the attic, for a future that might never arrive.”

While hosting a radio show on coping with bereavement, Yui hears from a caller with an arresting tale. The man, whose wife was swept away by the storm, describes a faraway phone booth that “isn’t connected to anything, but your voice is carried away with the wind.” Here he chats with his beloved: “I’ll say, Hi, Yoko, how are you? And I feel myself becoming the person I was before.” Intrigued, Yui decides to make the long trip north to visit. 

Once at Bell Gardia, she wanders the grounds in breathless wonder. Approaching the booth – white, with a sky-blue roof, and marked with a signpost that says “The Wind Phone” – Yui spots a man inside. This is Takeshi, a widowed doctor whose young daughter, Hana, has been silent since her mother’s death.

Imai Messina unfolds how Yui and Takeshi form a friendship of shared experience – and then navigate the trickier shoals of a deeper relationship – in lyrical, unrushed prose that avoids sentimentality.

The two friends begin monthly pilgrimages to Bell Gardia. They start to text throughout the week; slowly, phone calls follow. “Both of them felt they had, somehow, been found, like two objects stuck together by chance at the bottom of a handbag,” writes Imai Messina. Yui admires Takeshi’s dedication to speaking to his wife from the Wind Phone, but continues only to wander the gardens each time they visit, unsure if she has the strength to step inside the booth.

Even so, Bell Gardia – and their time together – is shaping them both. “The meetings were starting to feel less like two strangers gathering at one point in the world to travel to another, and more like a return,” writes Imai Messina. “Him returning to her. Her returning to him.” As they grow closer, Takeshi confides in Yui, sharing his concerns about Hana and seeking advice, and yet two years pass before friend and daughter finally meet. That first day together serves as a key scene in the story – and launches a relationship that provides both happy moments and anxious questions that test Yui, while propelling the reader forward.

Every other chapter in “The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World” offers a break in the prose:  a playlist, a drawing, a series of quotes, 10 vivid memories, the contents of a bento prepared for Hana. These brief segments add rich detail to the novel without slowing down the storytelling. (Try recreating the playlist on Spotify and listening to it while you read.)

Others enter the story with their own sadnesses and loss. Keita, a local high-school student, visits the garden after kendo practice each day to share family updates with his deceased mother. Shio, a young hospital worker never far from his father’s Bible, befriends Yui and Takeshi during their second year of Bell Gardia trips. Unlike most others, Shio uses the phone booth to speak to the living, rather than the dead.

Such characters, and such a setting, risk tipping the tale into a depressing bog. Yet Imai Messina, like her story’s powerful wind, pushes these individuals forward. They question, they consider, and they take fresh steps.

It is the trio of Yui, Takeshi and Hana, however, who exert the greatest emotional pull in the novel, and help deliver its satisfying ending. Each overcomes fear and gnawing doubt in their individual ways; each has the Wind Phone to thank for much of that growth.

“When nobody is there to see the miracle, the miracle happens,” writes Imai Messina. Fortunately, readers are the exception to that “nobody” – watching and cheering from their own edge of the world.