Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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? 

Blurb taken from Goodreads.

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Over the past few months, I've seen Before the Coffee Gets Cold talked about a lot, especially on Instagram. I didn't really know what it was about, but when I saw it for £1 in a second hand bookshop, I decided to take a chance on it. 

Wow. I am so glad that I did. As soon as I started reading, I fell in love with the story. We follow a number of different characters during the book, and each of them had a beautiful story that moved me greatly. A couple of weeks after I finished it, and I think it might be one of my favourite books of the year. Utterly beautiful.

Rating: ✫✫✫✫✫

The Story

The book is split into four different chunks, so although the story flows well, the focus is on a different character at different points in the narrative. This was something I actually thought worked remarkably well. The book is centered around such powerful themes and conversations that it would have felt like each part of the story was done a disservice if it was one continuous narrative. The structure helped to prioritize the different conversations in a way that made them even more powerful to read about.

This is helped by the fact that the concept for this book is remarkable. It really makes you think about your own life, and the regrets you have. We see a woman hoping to understand why her boyfriend left her, a woman hoping to reach out to her husband before his dementia made him confused, a woman who wants to see her sister one last time, and a woman who wishes desperately to meet her child. 

The cafe is a special one, and there are rules that surround this time travel. It can only happen in particular moments, and there is only a certain amount of time for each conversation. Each character has a different reason for wanting it to happen, and I think each was equally interesting. It's difficult to create characters in such a short space of time that spark emotional and thought in the reader, but they all did. Each of their worries touched me in a different way, and I felt a connection to each of them in a  way that rarely happens to me in fiction.

I have to say, I felt all of the different elements of the cafe, and of the time travel, just made it feel more and more magical. It honestly felt so special, and I loved the comforting feeling it gave me. Most authors try to go for light-hearted or emotional, because it is so hard to pull off both in a way that works. Thankfully, this worked, and it was wonderfully crafted. The attention to detail, but at the same time the simplicity, really make this such a beautiful story that definitely touches your heart.

The Verdict

I wasn't sure if this book would live up to all the hype, but I decided to give it a go anyway.

I am unbelievably glad I did. I'm finding it really difficult to put into words just how special this book became to me, but I finished it in one sitting, and I loved it so much. It was an interesting and unique story that I thought was utterly beautiful from start to finish. 

I'd urge anybody to read this story, as I think it would have an impact on everyone in some way. I'll be eagerly waiting for the opportunity I get to read the second installment.