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A review by nini23
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This book and its predecessor could have been charming given its unique premise. However, I find the shorthand emotional writing shallow and annoying. The author doesn't take time to build a connection with the characters, instead lobbing us readers with lazy reductive emotional flashcard cues/prompts such as cancer, suicide, miscarriage, death. It's like the white truck of doom often joked about in transmigration Japanese stories, the accident isn't the point, just a means for the plot to move forward. I would like to hope that humans and their stories are more nuanced than that. Instead, the author doesn't trust us to reach our own conclusions and spells everything out painstakingly for us. The wedding ring on Asami's finger which she showed to Kurata at their meeting, for instance, we could have connected the dots as to its ownership with a sprinkling of clues instead of being bluntly told.
Why did I pick up the second book in the series if the first one wasn't satisfactory? I was curious about the ghost in white, whose backstory is revealed in Tales From The Cafe. Her (Kaname is her name) story turns out to be not that impactful, she wasn't a good judge of what 'before the coffee turns cold' meant. For that matter, although the rules for time travel are rigid and repeated over and over, the author makes sure through plot manipulation that people with regrets say their piece and are prevented from their own folly of not meeting their desired person or accidentally returning before their time. It's like in dramas or theater where the dying person miraculously has just enough breath and life to have a full soliloquy before expiring.
What annoys me the most are the simplistic views espoused. When a person is clinically depressed with suicidal ideation, there's chemical imbalances in the brain and no magic phrase or soothing aphorism is suddenly going to heal them. Grief, guilt and regrets take difficult long work to get through, there is no shortcut. A clump of cells is not a baby or a child, not even a fetus. And I'd like to know how Kimiko truly feels about being denied her dream job of being a police officer solely on account of her being female while her husband is promoted swiftly to detective and he doesn't even want the position! As for those sweeping grandiose generalized statements of parental love for their children, well there is a surfeit of child abandonment, neglect and abuse cases to put that to rest.
Why did I pick up the second book in the series if the first one wasn't satisfactory? I was curious about the ghost in white, whose backstory is revealed in Tales From The Cafe. Her (Kaname is her name) story turns out to be not that impactful, she wasn't a good judge of what 'before the coffee turns cold' meant. For that matter, although the rules for time travel are rigid and repeated over and over, the author makes sure through plot manipulation that people with regrets say their piece and are prevented from their own folly of not meeting their desired person or accidentally returning before their time. It's like in dramas or theater where the dying person miraculously has just enough breath and life to have a full soliloquy before expiring.
What annoys me the most are the simplistic views espoused. When a person is clinically depressed with suicidal ideation, there's chemical imbalances in the brain and no magic phrase or soothing aphorism is suddenly going to heal them. Grief, guilt and regrets take difficult long work to get through, there is no shortcut. A clump of cells is not a baby or a child, not even a fetus. And I'd like to know how Kimiko truly feels about being denied her dream job of being a police officer solely on account of her being female while her husband is promoted swiftly to detective and he doesn't even want the position! As for those sweeping grandiose generalized statements of parental love for their children, well there is a surfeit of child abandonment, neglect and abuse cases to put that to rest.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt