Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Blurb (on back of book): What would you change if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
MY OPINION: ****
I really enjoyed reading this book though there were parts where it felt very slowgoing and monotonous. I have been trying to read some shorter books and I've recently gotten into translated books. This is yet another originally Japanese set of short stories translated into English. I haven't read enough of these to know the general themes but I found a lot of similarities in terms of writing style and pacing that I also read in Convenience Store Woman, the only other Japanese to English story I've read so far.
I'm not sure what genre this book fits into. It's giving literary fiction with a bit of magical realism, since there is a time travel aspect. The book is told through four short stories that are connected to each other but aren't necessarily chronological. I don't read short story collections, especially if they have nothing to do with each other, but this one was fine with my tastes. I liked how each of them had some sort of relationship or nod of acknowledgement to the other stories and by the end, you can see the threads between the characters and their reasons for time traveling throughout each story.
I originally rated this book four stars but for the life of me, I honestly do not remember why. I read it a solid three weeks ago and am only getting around to writing the book review for it now, since it's finally summer. I don't actually remember a lot about it. I know people said it was very emotional and heartbreaking but I did not cry and I don't recall feeling that sad about anything in it. I do remember the last story, which I won't spoil, and I remember being shocked by the plottwist but I was by no means about to start sobbing. I think that if books that are supposedly making others cry do not make me, the most emotional person ever, start sobbing, something is not clicking.
The pacing is very slow going. While the overall book itself is very short in comparison to other books, it felt like each page dragged on and on and I was struggling to get through some of the stories. I'm not sure if this was just me but I felt as if all of the characters were very artificial and plasticky. It was hard to follow who was who, maybe because I am not well-versed in Japanese names and sort of skipped over each person's name while reading, but it made the book confusing. I also found most of the writing to be very disjointed and passive and I wasn't hit with some jawdropping, heartbreaking awe at the beauty and magnificence of these stories like I'd hoped.
Yet, I still liked this book. I liked the overall plot idea, and while the execution may not have been fully there, it wasn't necessarily a flop. The book is set in a quaint coffee shop with a special seat that allows people to travel back in time. There's a lot of different rules that are very constricting and makes the entire thing seem almost worthless, as stated by many of the characters, but as you read the stories, you start to see the importance of each meeting back in time, even if it can't change the present or future. And honestly, with the trauma of the butterfly effect, it's actually quite helpful that nothing in the present will change.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The first story was very forgettable, to be quite honest. The main girl wants to travel back in time to visit her boyfriend who has broken up with her to go to America in pursuit of a better job. She literally starts seeing herself as less because of her boyfriend's success and honestly, that didn't sit well with me. She is very accomplished and can speak six languages and yet she considers herself as worth nothing once her boyfriend finds his own success and leaves her.
The second story follows a wife whose husband is going through Alzheimer's and has just forgotten who she is. She travels back in the past to see what letter her husband meant to give her before. Eh, the story wasn't the worst but it also didn't make me feel sad?? She thought of herself as her husband's nurse and was somehow satisfied with that. Yes, she loved him, but I also didn't like this depiction of a woman subservient to her husband, especially one who doesn't even know her anymore.
The third story, which I may be wrong about, is about a woman whose sister dies after trying unsuccessfully to visit her. It's about family and how things can go wrong and the regrets you may have once you lose it. I found this one to be the least realistic and again, it did not make me feel sad. Maybe I wasn't in the right mindset for this book but this one was almost laughable. Suddenly this daughter just gives up her entire career to go be with the family she claims to hate..
The fourth story is about a pregnant woman who is literally ready to die for her baby to be born. She is ignoring any and all health risks and yet this book glorifies her decision. Now, I've never been pregnant and yes, it is a mother's choice, but she is so calm and ready to give up her life for her unborn child even though her own husband and the people around her are against it and will obviously be hurt and devastated by her almost selfish decision.
After the first couple of stories, it does start to feel a little repetitive and monotonous but we do get to see a lot of different stories and themes and overarching messages being told through each story. I would have appreciated seeing something new or unique or different about the journey (maybe seeing the curse go into effect?) but we aren't given that.
I didn't hate this book. I really enjoyed the themes and the plot. There were just things about the writing that I would change. I'm not sure if this would be different if I could understand Japanese, though. I would recommend this book to readers looking for a short, poignant, magical realist story.
Main Character: The four visitors
Sidekick(s): Family, friends
Villain(s): Death, misogyny, sickness, etc
Magical Realism Elements: This book is very real to life but features a time traveling aspect.
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