Title: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: September 19, 2019
Length: 213 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

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?

I’ve been hearing about Before the Coffee Gets Cold for years now, and finally made the time to sit and enjoy this cozy, sweet tale.

The setup is simple: A tiny basement cafe in Tokyo has only three tables plus a counter, has three clocks on the wall that show different times (although no one knows why), and is the focus of an urban legend that just happens to be true:

If you sit in a particular chair and focus on a time you want to visit, you can travel to the past — but you can’t leave that chair, nothing you do actually changes the future, and you have to finish your coffee before it gets cold, at which point you return to the present.

For many people, the rules are deal-breakers. What’s the point of going back in time if you can’t actually change anything? But as we see through the four chapters of this slim book, each of which highlights a different person’s reason for time traveling, there’s much to be gained with an open heart and open mind.

At just over 200 pages, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a fast read, and it felt easy and natural to read it pretty much straight through. The storyline is very calm — there’s little action here; rather, it’s a book about connections, emotions, and getting the chance to say the things we wish we’d said in the first place.

Without going into details about the characters and their particular stories, I’ll just say that the cafe staff and its regular visitors have simple yet strong connections, and as their stories unfold, the emotional impact builds as well.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a lovely, sweet reading experience — a warm hug of a book that I recommend enjoying on a day when you especially need something bright and uplifting.

Since Before the Coffee Gets Cold was published, four more books have been added to the series. Before the Coffee Gets Cold feels very complete on its own, so while I’d like to eventually read more of these books — assuming the rest will be as lovely as the first! — I feel like I can take my time and pick up the next book on a whim, on a day when I need it.