Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

3.5 Stars from me

There are a lot of very mixed views online about this one – for me it was a gentle, ‘thinky‘, read with a sweet cast of characters and an odd but interesting concept.

Presumably there is an intention of making the reader consider what they would do if they got their chance with ‘the chair’. I haven’t concluded that thought process as yet and I am enjoying the challenge of considering it.

Wrapped within the book are four ‘journeys’ each slightly different but all working within the rules of the cafe which put huge limitations on what can be achieved.

Focused on women, these four journeys all have a similar-ish theme and it is hard to expand further without giving spoiler – on that note be careful which reviews you read as I have seen plenty of spoilers online!

It’s not a whambamthankyoumam of a read, it is more of a trickle, a slow steady, thoughtful exploration. Overall I enjoyed it for its simplicity and that nudge to think about seizing the moment while you can.

Blurb: 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?