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A review by inherbooks
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
5.0
"After a long silence, lost in her feelings, Hirai managed to mutter just two words. 'Thank you.'
She didn’t know whether that one phrase could contain all these feelings of whether it conveyed how she felt. But every part of her at that moment was invested in those two words."
✨✨✨
You have the time it takes for the coffee to get cold to revisit the past inside this small coffee shop in Tokyo. Not a second longer. While there are a handful of rules to make this journey into the past, the most important one is that nothing you do will change the future as it has played out into the present. But then what’s the point? What about your heart? Does a change in your heart count?
This novel has four parts, four parts that equally tore me apart (for the better). A story about lovers, a husband and wife, sisters and a mother and daughter. I was genuinely skeptical about where the stories would go if the present couldn’t be changed – but wouldn’t it be a bold assumption that the present has given me all the answers? As if the way life has played out can be corrected if we just had a second chance, who was I kidding. But it’s not always about outcome is it? Sometimes it’s about the process, about closure, about putting the last thread of words in a conversation had but not spoken. How often have we been given the opportunity to speak, express, but passed up on it and spent a lifetime waiting for another chance?
These stories are wholesome in every sense. I found myself connecting with each character even without a similar lived experience. They’re humans. We're messy. Humans learning to connect and re-connect and sometimes it isn’t that pretty. It’s not meant to be, but if we’re given a chance to do it (a moment, a minute) again, what would we do/say differently?
She didn’t know whether that one phrase could contain all these feelings of whether it conveyed how she felt. But every part of her at that moment was invested in those two words."
✨✨✨
You have the time it takes for the coffee to get cold to revisit the past inside this small coffee shop in Tokyo. Not a second longer. While there are a handful of rules to make this journey into the past, the most important one is that nothing you do will change the future as it has played out into the present. But then what’s the point? What about your heart? Does a change in your heart count?
This novel has four parts, four parts that equally tore me apart (for the better). A story about lovers, a husband and wife, sisters and a mother and daughter. I was genuinely skeptical about where the stories would go if the present couldn’t be changed – but wouldn’t it be a bold assumption that the present has given me all the answers? As if the way life has played out can be corrected if we just had a second chance, who was I kidding. But it’s not always about outcome is it? Sometimes it’s about the process, about closure, about putting the last thread of words in a conversation had but not spoken. How often have we been given the opportunity to speak, express, but passed up on it and spent a lifetime waiting for another chance?
These stories are wholesome in every sense. I found myself connecting with each character even without a similar lived experience. They’re humans. We're messy. Humans learning to connect and re-connect and sometimes it isn’t that pretty. It’s not meant to be, but if we’re given a chance to do it (a moment, a minute) again, what would we do/say differently?