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?
Chief, the NuriaStore bookseller –
A novel by Japanese writer Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Its a Bitter-sweet Japanese style story.
Even though the concept is good but writing could be more interesting, there could be more twists and turns. I couldn’t find writing very appealing. maybe because book is more like a playwright. but its a good read.
Story is kind of old age fantasy time travel not sci-fi. There is underground café in small alley, windowless, in working for more than hundred years. It has 4-5 tables and very few customers. Even though it was famous for providing unique experience to customers.
In this coffee shop we meet four customers, who get to experience time travel. there are four short stories interconnected to each other. “The lover” about confronting lover who left them, “Husband an wife” about receiving letter from husband whos losing his memory,
“The sisters” about sisters want to meet for last time, “Mother and child” about meeting daughter they never got chance to know. Only limited characters and single place, so story is light weight.
There are certain rule to go to the past. There is particular sit in café that takes you to your past, and you have to return to the present before coffee gets cold. both person going to past and person they want to meet should have visited that café before and many more.
The chair which takes you to past is permanently occupied by a women in white dress and the only way to sit on chair, when that women gets up to go to bathroom.
With all the rules for time travel, Its seems pointless to go to past. what if you lose track of time and your coffee got cold. and even if you go back to past, whatever you do, It will not change present.