Hello friends! Welcome to another book discussion on Armed with A Book. Today, Ariel and I are discussing Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a Japanese book by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot. I have seen this book on social media a lot over the last year or so and since it met our criteria of reading book from other countries, we decided to pick this one up! Check out the synopsis and content notes below then dive into our discussion.
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?
Content Notes: Dementia, death, grief, car accident, death of parent.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Whole book Discussion
I loved this collection of stories, all set in a little coffee shop in Japan. The feel of the place was described just right and I found myself able to visualize and go to the place. The legend of being able to travel in time briefly and meet someone who was at the coffee store then gives the café a timeless and ageless feel.
This book has been on my TBR for awhile now. I’m really glad we were able to read it together! I liked how we were gradually drawn into the world and introduced to the magical rules. Sometimes, time travel can get convoluted and a bit over-complicated, but Before the Coffee Gets Cold presents the reader with a simplicity of time travel that boils down to drinking a single cup of coffee.
It took some time to adjust to the setting, especially in the first story. The slow nature of the cafe business contributed to a slow introduction to the world but once I got to the characters, figured out who were the everyday customers at the cafe, who were the owners and staff, it became easy to focus on the magical aspects of the story. The aspect of time traveling while drinking a cup of coffee is brilliant – I love how it caused tension, because there was only so much time, and seeing how the cafe changed as people visited different times. What did you think of the different rules for time travel, Ariel?
I thought they were so well written! I personally always feel tension whenever there is a time-crunch or deadline the characters must meet, and when these characters were faced with unpleasant consequences of letting the coffee get cold, I felt myself being very stressed on their behalf that they wouldn’t make it back in time!
There are four stories in this collection and I appreciated how different they were, yet at the same time, how each helps the next one develop. The one called ‘The Sisters’ spoke to the things we do as humans to save some pain in the present, not realizing repercussions of the same for our future selves. Avoiding a relative, not hearing someone’s true intentions out and thinking we know why they are acting the way they are are assumptions we make and sometimes they hurt.
By having a more distant perspective, we were able to see things as the readers that the characters did not. It places us in a position where we see where a character isn’t being as appreciative as they could be, and we could almost begin to guess when a character should have valued a connection more than they did in that moment. It provides a mirror for ourselves in our own lives, when we feel maybe too busy to stop and appreciate the connections we make throughout life.
‘Husband and Wife’ was such a sweet story about an old man suffering from dementia and his wife who is a nurse. I loved how they both had similar reasons to visit the past and how their visit came together.
This story was beautiful and heart-wrenching. I loved how the book portrayed a long-term partnership that seemed to transcend time.
Yes, I loved that too!
‘Mother and Child’ was the most heartbreaking story of all! I cried so much in that one, more than I cried in Husband and Wife. When the future is uncertain, it makes sense to want to glimpse the future. When the question of travelling to the future comes up in the book, I was interested to know how it would be handled. I was not disappointed!
Yes, this one really is tragic in many ways, and I loved how the time-travel capabilities provided gifts to both the mother and the child in different ways. We were well-immersed into the story by this point, and so we were able to best feel each of the emotions the book presented throughout the story. In a simple, minimalistic tale, Before the Coffee Gets Cold provides readers with profound narratives full of connection, longing, regrets, and community.
Concluding Thoughts on Before the Coffee Gets Cold
This was a beautiful collection of stories. We look forward to reading the follow-up collection Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café and bringing it to you.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is now available in stores. Be sure to check your local library and request this from them for it to reach more people.
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
Thank you for reading! For more book discussions, check out the books with * in the Book Review Index. I will be relaunching the page by the end of the month so stay tuned for the new look.
Cover Image: Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
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