Before the coffee gets cold: A Review

 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than a 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-travelling offer, on order to confront a lover who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has begun to fade, 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 café, and finally, they must return before the coffee gets cold…

 

This story originally began as a play before being adapted into a novel in 2015. It was a bestseller in Japan and was translated into English and published in 2019. The story follows a café in Tokyo that allows its customers to travel back in time. However, it comes with a strict set of rules: you must sit in a specific seat, you must not leave the café, and they must return to the present before the cup of coffee they have gets cold. 

 

In the book, the story focuses on the experiences of four customers and why they wish to travel through time. The first customer, a businesswoman called Fumiko, wishes to go back in time to talk to her ex-boyfriend and attempt to repair their relationship after he leaves Japan for a job in the United States. The second customer is a nurse called Kohtake and she goes back in time to find a letter that her now Alzheimer-stricken husband wrote to her before his memory began to fade. The third customer, bar owner and frequent café customer Hirai, wishes to go back to try and talk to her estranged sister who she has been actively avoiding since moving to Tokyo. The final customer is one of the café’s co-owners, Kei, who tries to go to the future instead of the past in order to talk to her unborn daughter.  

 

I really enjoyed reading this book. The stories were so heart-warming, and the concept was so simple but amazing. The stories did not always end the perfect way and dealt with tragic events, but it also provided a sense of clarity for the customers. It explores the idea of time travel, and would you change the past if you were given the option to. It explores regrets, feelings, love, and so much more. Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes the concept of time travel that has been used so many times in literature and media and puts a unique spin on it that is both so simple and so complex.

 

I highly recommend this book to everyone. It was an incredible story about strength and moving on and living life to the fullest. 

 

Until next time, I’ll continue reading with wanderlust.

📚🧳✈️🗺