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A review by maketeaa
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
genuinely one of those books that just feels like a warm hug. funiculi funicula is the perfect set for a time travelling café: underground, lit by old-fashioned lamps, with no phone signal, and only a smattering of customers at a time. the urban legend says that patrons can time travel, but there are rules attached -- they must stay seated in the specific chair to travel through, they cannot change the present from the past, and they must return before the coffee gets cold, lest they turn into a ghost. in this smattering of customers, we peer inside their hearts to see what they would use their singular chance to travel through time for, what is is that means to them enough to experience one last time without being able to change the present.
what we learn is that, while we can't change the present from the past, we can choose to do things differently. we can re-evaluate how we imagine our memories -- both past and future -- and change how we behave to be happier. every character travels to a different time in order to receive some kind of truth that they crave, some kind of curiosity to be sated, and while nothing substantial changes in their reality, their expansion of awareness changes their life itself.
and i think what's also quite poignant is that, for each person, the people they wanted to meet in the past (or future) loved them very much. fears of resentment, of abandonment, of anger against them turned out not to be true at all. i guess it's just a very sweet reminder that things are never as bad as we think they are, or will be.
such a sweet and emotional book! i definitely teared up in the last conversation between kei and miki.
what we learn is that, while we can't change the present from the past, we can choose to do things differently. we can re-evaluate how we imagine our memories -- both past and future -- and change how we behave to be happier. every character travels to a different time in order to receive some kind of truth that they crave, some kind of curiosity to be sated, and while nothing substantial changes in their reality, their expansion of awareness changes their life itself.
and i think what's also quite poignant is that, for each person, the people they wanted to meet in the past (or future) loved them very much. fears of resentment, of abandonment, of anger against them turned out not to be true at all. i guess it's just a very sweet reminder that things are never as bad as we think they are, or will be.
such a sweet and emotional book! i definitely teared up in the last conversation between kei and miki.