Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (audio)
traveling to the past to ease the future
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, narrated by Arina Ii, is translated to English from Japanese and is a set of four linked stories — The Lovers, Husband and Wife, The Sisters, and Mother and Child — set in a back-alley cafe in Tokyo, Funiculi Funicula, where there is one table where magical things can happen. This cafe has been brewing coffee for more than 100 years and is the subject of local legend that says the shop is a place where you can travel back in time.
Four sets of customers visit the cafe for their own reasons for their journey back in time, but there are very specific rules about traveling in time, and nothing you do in the past can change the present. No matter your reason for traveling into the past, you must complete your business before the coffee gets cold.
Kawaguchi explores the inner turmoil of these characters at choices they’ve made, ways they have treated others, and the love that binds all of them. They’re community revolves around these stories, the coffee, and the past. Quietly each character must address large issues that loom in their lives, whether it is leaving home and avoiding their family, being unable to love as one should when Alzheimer’s takes hold, or the potential loss of a child.
These stories make the readers review their own lives and think about what time they would like to revisit in their lives and why. If you could only choose one, which would it be?
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, which is the first book in a series, melds in ceremony and ritual into this time-traveling cafe and explores some of the deepest regrets humans can carry. Would traveling to the past to speak to someone eliminate those regrets for you? Exacerbate them? Or alleviate the pain, even if it doesn’t change the present?
RATING: Quatrain
About the Author:
Toshikazu Kawaguchi (in Japanese: 川口 俊 和) was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He formerly produced, directed and wrote for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. As a playwright, his works include COUPLE, Sunset Song, and Family Time. The novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold is adapted from a 1110 Productions play by Kawaguchi, which won the 10th Suginami Drama Festival grand prize.
I have to read this. It sounds so interesting!