{"id":18072,"date":"2026-03-03T16:56:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/?p=18072"},"modified":"2026-03-03T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:56:01","slug":"irje-7-the-phone-booth-at-the-edge-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/irje-7-the-phone-booth-at-the-edge-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"IRJE #7- The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World<\/em> is a novel written by Imai Messina about a woman named Yui. Yui lost both her mother and daughter due to the 2011 Japanese tsunami. She hears about a disconnected &#8220;wind phone&#8221; where people converse with deceased loved ones in a man&#8217;s backyard, and many travel miles to visit. Eventually, she decides to make her own pilgrimage down to the strange phone booth. Yui, still struggling with the loss, can&#8217;t find the courage to speak into the receiver. She meets Takeshi, a widower whose daughter stopped speaking after he mothers death, leading to a story of shared recovery. The book is inspired by a real, non-functional phone booth in Otsuchi, Japan.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yui and Takeshi gradually realized that the Wind Phone was like a verb that conjugated differently for each person: everybody&#8217;s grief looked the same at first, but was, ultimately, unique. (p.70)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This quotation is saying that grief is a shared human experience, but it is also deeply personal. It may seem similar on the surface, but it &#8220;conjugates&#8221; differently for every individual, shaped by their memories, personality, and relationship with the person they lost. I chose this quotation because it says in a really beautiful way that pain can connect us, but that it also belongs uniquely to each of us.<\/p>\n<div class=\"r2VLS\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"y1yadf\">\n<div class=\"CcNe6e v4Zpbe\" role=\"button\" aria-expanded=\"false\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is a novel written by Imai Messina about a woman named Yui. Yui lost both her mother and daughter due to the 2011 Japanese tsunami. She [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18074,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18072\/revisions\/18074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}