‘Are you listening?’ Kazu continued. ‘When you return to the past, you must drink the entire cup before the coffee goes cold.’
Introduction to the author and book
TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI (in Japanese: 川口 俊 和) was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He has produced, directed and written for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. Before the Coffee Gets Cold was first written as a play in 2010 and won won the grand prize at the Suginami Drama Festival. It was adapted into a novel in 2015, translated into English by Geoffrey Trousselot and published by Picador in September 2019. This is his debut as an author of a novel. Before the Coffee Gets Cold has become an international bestseller and has been adapted for the screen in Japan.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold (コーヒーが冷めないうちに, Kohi ga Samenai Uchi ni) is a 2015 novel by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It tells of a café in Tokyo that allows its customers to travel back in time, as long as they return before their coffee gets cold.
In a narrow back alley in Tokyo lies a café called Funiculi Funicula which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the opportunity to travel to a time of their choosing, as long as they follow a list of strict rules:
There is only one seat in the café that allows time travel;
· the seat is only available when the ghost that usually occupies it goes for a toilet break;
· once back in time, customers can’t leave the seat;
· the only people in the past who can be met are people who have visited the café;
· whatever happens in the past, the present won’t change;
· and, most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold (around 1 hour).
The novel follows the stories of the café staff, notably the barista Kazu, and four different customers. The first customer is a businesswoman named Fumiko who tries to repair her relationship with her boyfriend after he left the country for a job in the United States. The second customer, a nurse named Kohtake, tries to find a letter her Alzheimer-stricken husband wrote. The third customer is a bar owner named Hirai, who tries to initiate a conversation with her sister whom she’s been avoiding. The fourth customer is Kei, one of the café co-owners, who tries to go to the future to talk to her unborn daughter.
Through the stories of its four characters, the author delivers a compelling message: the past cannot be altered, but the future remains open and full of possibilities. 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?
What do you think of this novel?
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Vicki James & Helen Sinclair
The next book for July 24 will be …
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah