Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the first of a series of 5 sequence novels with continuing themes and titles including: Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye and Before We Forget Kindness. The writer, Toshikazu Kawaguchi, is a screenwriter and author born in Osaka.
The novels’ stories are set in a fictional time-travelling café in Tokyo. The café, Funiculi Funicula, is situated in a basement on a lone side street. It has no windows and is only dimly lit by a few wall lamps, making it impossible to know whether it’s day or night. On one of the sepia stained walls, are three clocks each displaying different times. The café has three counter seats and three two-seater tables with their chairs. Certain regulars patronize it daily. “Urban legend” has it that this time-travelling café once attracted long queues and interest, but this has since passed.
The café allows guests to go back to the past or into the future to meet someone of their choosing. They do this by sitting in a specific seat which is usually occupied by a real-life ghost except when she vacates it once a day, for the toilet, at an unpredictable time. For this reason, the café is prepared to stay open for any guest for whom the opportunity to time-travel does not present during opening hours.
The ghost is always reading a book but precedes her temporary absence by slamming it shut before walking off. In the interim, the lucky guest may occupy the vacant ghost’s seat. The café attendant will bring a steaming cup of coffee for the guest to sip and be transported in a haze of steam to their meeting of the past or future. During the encounter, the guest must remember to drink all the coffee before it gets cold or otherwise become the new ghost occupier of the chair.
There are a bunch of other rules which are explained as the stories unfold. The most significant one being that the guest can only time-travel to meet someone whom they have previously met in the café and they can do this only once. This, together with the limited seating, would surely reduce the number of people eligible to time-travel and perhaps explain why the café has fallen out of popular interest.
The stories in the book describe four time-travel meetings between: lovers; husband and wife; sisters; and mother and child. The triggers for these meetings are varied: regret, hope, a desire for truth, and clarity on previously unknown information. Café staff explain that time-travelling will not change or undo the present; however a later understood consequence is that the way we embrace the present could be different if we understood and could make good with the past.
In the lovers’ story, we learn that a misunderstanding of intention leads to a difficult separation. But going back to the past, gives one of them hope for a future reconciliation. For the husband and wife, their meeting in the past informs her acceptance of the present circumstances, and for him introduces a comforting hope for healing. For the sisters, their meeting uncovers the extant love of the younger for her older sibling, resulting in family redemption and new responsibility. For the pregnant mother and unborn child, it is a relief to see her well-adapted child in the future and to know she will have made the right decision to give her life at the expense of her own.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is both unusual and thought provoking. It’s a clever blend of fantasy (time-travelling), comedy (a ghost who goes to the toilet), ridiculousness (the melodrama and arbitrary rules), absurdity (no one knows the answer to obvious questions), realism (references to Japanese places, festivals, and the story dated in 2014) and goodness (love, empathy and understanding).
Some have commented that the novel portrays woman in predictable ways, such as waiting on men, acting as their carers, and being self-sacrificing for others. While this may be accurate, it is also true that they are the main protagonists and, as such, the heroines of the stories.
Early in my reading, I formed the impression that the novel reads like a play. The clues being: the limited cast (characters); the detailed description of the set (café); the unusually high incidence of dialogue, melodrama and action; irrelevant clothing and appearance details; and the direct characterisation of the protagonists. Only later, I noticed a small inscription embedded in an opening page paragraph stating that the novel is adapted from the author’s award-winning play of the same name. In my opinion, this information should be more clearly visible so readers do not miss this important detail which influences the content and structure of the story.
American colloquialisms like “you’ve got to be kidding”, “you’re messing with me” and “……..…, right?” are many. These seem out of context for a novel set in Japan, until the full realisation that it is an American-English translation from the Japanese (albeit by an Australian, Geoffrey Trousselot).
The book cover featuring a table lamp, cat and vintage chairs is curious because the author goes to great lengths to describe the café’s décor where none of the former are mentioned and the chair legs are not of the type described.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading its sequels.
Also, I am still pondering the question in its opening pages:
“If you could go back, who would you want to meet?”
Tracey Paul