Review: "The phone will ring"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 20, 2013
Haruki and Misato were the only survivors on a bus trapped in a tunnel that collapsed in a remote area of northern Japan. Faced with the stark realization that it could be hours before anyone learned of their plight, they struggled together to escape from the suffocating darkness of the tunnel. As real as the darkness is, it's also a symbol for Haruki's and Misato's lives, as each has struggled in their own way with the fear of darkness.Author Takamichi Okubo has written a suspenseful and poignant account of two very different people drawn together by circumstances beyond their control, forced to work together to survive a disaster. In doing so, one of them learns from the other that it really is darkest before the dawn, and to never give up hope.Stories like "In the Tunnel" give me encouragement that the art of the short story is still very much alive.