By Toshikazu Kawaguchi
ISBN: 9781529029581
Fans of Japanese literature, time travel, or magical realism in the movie ‘Spirited Away’ will love this book.
Synopsis:
“In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe 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 cafe’s time-traveling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer’s, see their sister one last time, and 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 cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .”
What’s to like:
This short book is bound to get anyone emotional. The stories of the four characters and their encounters in the past make you pause and value your loved ones. In the mysterious and cozy setting of the café, Kawaguchi has created a perfect backdrop for journeys to the past. The characters in the book are unpretentious and you like them all for their straightforward and honest personalities. What I especially liked was that there is no complicated plot or characters but the beauty of the book lies in the relationships and interactions of the characters with their loved ones.
What’s not to like:
The descriptions of the time travel process can seem repetitive and the rules of the time travel were also mentioned several times which some can find unnecessary. It did also seem that the story should have offered more. The end especially makes one wish there were more details for some of the stories such as Fumiko and Goro’s and Kazu’s story. Since it is the first book in a series, I presume there will be more in the books to follow.
It can take a while to get into the book but it grows on the reader.
Book Review Rating: 5/5 – Grows on you
Clean Content Rating: Clean, Age advisory: 13+