User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
[The first story feels so old fashioned, with a girl crying over being left by a guy and this just continues. I mean the geek boyfriend of a stunningly beautiful girl gets a job in the US
Rating: really liked it
Despite the appealing subject, the writing ruined the reading for me. It is written more as a theater play than anything else, with the right setup and characters. Everything is explained and the whole story takes place in the coffee shop.
The blurb is very accurate, so I won’t get into details. However, nothing in it to keep my interest. The characters are like puppets, their dialogues disjointed, the actions artificial.
The time travel part is more of a disguise here, I wouldn’t classify it in this sub-genre; it’s more of a magical realism story about regrets and things not said or done until too late and the possibility to change that; well, sort of.
Not my cup of coffee at all.
>>> ARC received thanks to
Pan Macmillan/Picador via NetGalley <<<
Rating: really liked it
this was a beautiful and deep story…now why do i feel this 20 pound weight on my chest of damaging and immobilizing sadness?!?
Rating: really liked it
5/5stars
No question this is as good as everyone keeps saying. Absolutely beautifully simply written, incredibly unique especially on such an over used idea like time travel, absolutely tragic but also incredibly happy and dealing with some tough subjects almost everyone can empathize with, honestly one of the few books I can call INSPIRING.
Absolutely loved this wow
Rating: really liked it
[The only story I didn't care about was the last one. I absolutely hate the trope of "woman keeps pregnancy knowing it will kill her because she wants a baby". Nope nope nope. (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
Summary (Throwback Review)
This is a beautifully written novel happening inside a retro cafe where time travel is possible. It has four different stories interwoven together with characters who have their individual existence yet perfectly complement each other.
What I learned from this book 1) The effect of Alzheimer’s disease in marital and family life In Alzheimer’s disease, the subtle and sporadic deterioration of patients brain function will be a very arduous phase in their partners, and their family members life, and it is one of the rare situations in Medical Science where the spouse and family members suffer more than the patient (The author depicted it perfectly through the characters Fusagi and Kohtake.)
2) Hope for a better future is the secret behind our current happy existence When Kei said she wanted to go to the future to see whether she would have her child due to all the pregnancy-related complications she was having at that time, her husband Nagare argued strongly against her decision as he thought that if she went into the future and discovered that the child didn’t exist, the hope which is the inner strength that had been sustaining his wife until then would be destroyed. The author shows us that hope is one of the most important things in our life via these two characters.
3) How we should behave if someone close to us passes away The author beautifully told us how to face the death of our loved ones in this book by convincing us to stay happy and always keep on smiling so that the person who died can see us happy from the dark box (The author compares death to a dark box in this novel) to make him/her also happy.
My favourite three lines from this book or related to this book “At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change.” “Negativity is food for malady, one might say.” “Coffee on a sail boat tastes like sunrise ” Verdict 4/5This is a book written in simple language that makes you fall in love with it from the first page itself due to its veracity and edifies us to relish the beauty of our life through love and hope.
Rating: really liked it
A slow-moving, but beautifully paced novel about time-travel and questioning the idea that if you were given an opportunity to visit the past, would you? Even though there is nothing that you can change? Even if there are strict measurements set in place making it seem almost pointless to even take part in the activity?
This story left me slightly overwhelmed. This was such a character-driven story with so much heart and puts you in the shoes of those characters and you become connected to their pain and suffering as the story evolves.
It's captivating and memorable and I desperately need more stories like this.
Rating: really liked it
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Rating: really liked it
This book reminds me of an old Italian car, perhaps an Alfa Romeo, or a 1970s Ferrari.
On the surface it looks great, but when you start it up... oh dear. At best the poor thing limps along well under the speed limit, an ominous cacophony of clunking sounds and grinding noises issuing from under the hood.
I was expecting much more as this is a book that has a lot of fans.
I can see why - the central concept is a nice one, and the stories are cute, in a way that is quite charmingly Japanese. In an old cafe, unchanged for decades, you can order a cup of coffee that will take you into the past. There is a catch, however. You can't leave the cafe while you are time travelling, and you can only stay in the past for as long as it takes for your coffee to go cold.
Nice concept yeah? I think so too. But beyond this surface charm, well, things aren’t so slick.
Mechanically, from a storytelling and writing point of view,
Before the Coffee Gets Cold needs a complete overhaul.
It could be the translation, but this is a
very clunky book. I managed fifty-odd pages before the repetition of previously revealed information, forced dialogue and ham-fisted exposition caused the narrative engine to seize up on me. I tried to coax myself along, taking a break from the novel for a day, before coming back and easing it into gear again, but within a few pages I was back where I had been when I first gave up - bemusedly standing next to a smoking clunker of a book, wondering how so many people could love it.
Apparently, this book was written as a play first, which could explain why so much of it feels so over-explained and bluntly delivered. Much of what I found annoying could fill a role as stage directions in a performance piece, but it really jars in a novel. The fact that there time travellers must abide by a number of rules gets mentioned maybe ten times in the first section of the book, and the rules themselves get repeated so often that they become mantra-like.
This could work in a performance where the audience doesn’t have the script in front of them, but in a novel it feels as though the author is assuming their readers are morons who can’t recall the events of a few sentences prior.
Of course, I didn't actually finish this book - the narrative motor was never going to get me to the end - so perhaps things improve in the later stories. I doubt it though, and there was no way I was going to make it past page fifty.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold gets a lot of love here on Goodreads (so I kind of feel like I’m publicly kicking someone’s puppy) but it really wasn’t what I hoped for. In all honesty by the time the pot of tea I made when I sat down with this book had gone cold I had already decided to abandon it and start reading something else.
1.5 repetitious rules (did I mention there are rules? There are rules. Important rules. Shall we go over them again? THEY ARE IMPORTANT, DON’T FORGET THEM etc. etc.) out of five.
Rating: really liked it
The writing and the characters are really annoying.
Because it is the umpteenth time I picked it up and yet, it's time to accept the fact that this book is just not for me.
I just couldn't be patient with what the story was coming to with all that repetitive lines and the writing in the first half. The characters seem rather dull. I did try to finish up the book but I started having a headache because I was doing something I didn't want to and had to close the book and delete it after taking the picture.
Yes, I love Japanese books. I love weird stories. I like emotional, sad stories. This one is all these things but it just didn't work for me.
I really wanted to like this one but it's fine.
Just like what happened with A Man Called Ove (my heart's still broken!), this one has a similar history in my reading life.
I wish it was a short story instead. A short book which seemed too long amd repetitive for me (like how it happened with Autumn by Ali Smith).
Sad story indeed.
Rating: really liked it
❥ 4.5 / 5 starsDamn. If you read this book and you don’t cry, you’re freaking heartless.
Rating: really liked it
this is the book equivalent of a truck hitting you out of nowhere; the first three stories were pretty nice, emotional and touching and then BOOM the fourth story comes and suddenly you can't stop violently sobbing & crying
Rating: really liked it
honestly not my fav
i think it’s overhyped for me, i just couldn’t connect with it. there was a lot of repetition of descriptions and the rules and i’m not sure if that was meant to mean something but if it did, i didn’t get it. i thought the characters were quite flat but i liked each of their stories. overall, i think it was quite dull…
Rating: really liked it
‘
I was so absorbed in the things that I couldn’t change, I forgot the most important thing.’
If you could return to the past, but knew you couldn’t change anything, what would you go for?
Before The Coffee Gets Cold, the debut novel by Japanese playwright Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated into English by Geoffrey Trousselot, is a warm and quirky time-travel story all confined into the singular space of a small Tokyo coffee shop. Originally a play, which may have been a better medium as the book occasionally feels like a film novelisation with pacing issues, the story stands on the strength of it’s small cast of characters as they support and empathize with one another and, in turn, win over our empathy. The time travel is complete with its own mythology and a ghost, none of which make all that much sense but it works in order to examine the emotional obstacles that exist between people (if quirky and heartwarming time travel is your thing, though, just watch About Time because it's amazing). It is a unique take on the genre that seems certain of itself as a heartwarming tear-jerker and is successful at being moving although some of the stories are a bit eyebrow-raising (the final story is a theme I dislike). A bit rough around the edges,
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a rather cute and moving idea with plenty of emotional scenes that will certainly charm many despite the execution not quite living up to the premise.
'
The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability.'
The hook for this book is certainly the time travel aspect, the mechanics of which falls apart under careful scrutiny, sure, but this isn’t hard scifi and ultimately it serves as an engaging and charming plot vessel to look at interpersonal relationships. There is a strict set of rules that grow with each stories which makes for some absurd fun as the characters are often bewildered by how restrictive they are to the point of almost rendering the time traveling useless. The biggest one being that ‘
at the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change.’ Add on to this that you can only be back in time until your coffee gets cold or face horrible consequences, and the spacial limitations for traveling seem like a marketing trick to force someone to be a regular at the shop in order for the time traveling to even conceivably be useful.
All of these limitations make sense for a stage production with only one set, and, ultimately, that medium feels better fit for this story. At times it feels like over-direction as well, as if this book is giving notes for what is probably an inevitable film adaptation, with awkward overemphasis on the outfits and colors each character wears. Having it as a novel does give more insight into the characters and provide backstory and context, but so much was already done well with the dialogue it feels almost unnecessary. It might have been more effective had it not made the pacing so jumpy, with flashbacks constantly interrupting the scenes and drawing the tension out in a way that feels like the elimination round scenes in a reality show where you just want to get to the point.
What transpires is frequently moving, with much of the emotional weight pinned on long held secrets or insecurities finally being revealed. The second story is particularly effective and deals with alzheimers, though at this point it seems the novel puts a lot of emphasis on women sacrificing themselves and being expected to give endless emotional labor as a heroic act. Which, particularly in the final section becomes rather annoying (view spoiler)
[the final story involves sacrificing one’s health for a pregnancy and like, maybe men should cool off the “women dying in childbirth for emotional effect” trope because it’s not awesome (hide spoiler)], though another story involves a woman giving up her life and business to return to a family business she dislikes. It just feels a bit not great, but he does mine these scenarios for some particularly tearful scenes.
Before the Coffee Goes Cold has a lot of mechanical and thematic issues that didn’t work for me, but overall it succeeds as being a cozy and emotionally taxing read. I suspect a lot of people will be really moved by it and I’m sure will find it very heartwarming. Reading this does make me want to see the play and I quite enjoyed all the time travel aspects, particularly the ghost element that was playful and really worked to add texture to the story. A fun read, though not one I’m particularly fond of, but effectively shows the message that ‘
it takes courage to say what has to be said.’
2.5/5
Rating: really liked it
I went into this one with some hesitation as when I looked at my friends reviews, a grand total of two of them seemed to like it and everyone else didn't (some disliked it quite a bit). Still, I received it as a Christmas gift and who am I to pass on a free Japanese novel?
After I got to the half way point, I had to agree with a few things I saw many reviewers commenting on; the book is repetitive and that it’s overly sentimental, both of which are negatives for me. Now when I say overly sentimental, I mean the book will pull out any trick to get an emotional reaction from you, short of a child cancer patient caring for a sick kitten. The book is designed to try to get you to cry. My wife is a big fan of Japanese and Korean dramas and this feels like the novel equivalent. Comedy and melodrama mixed, wanting you to either laugh, cry or simply hope things will work out because we want our melancholy to be mixed with joy.
As for repetitive, the book, while a novel, is in many ways really just four short stories that are essentially variations of the same set up and (to a degree at least) the same conclusion. When looking up the author I discovered that he was a play writer, which does not surprise me in the slightest. The book really is a play in novel format down to the entire book taking place in the same room (one of the time travel rules is that you can't leave your seat).
Now, those two complaints aside... honestly, I kind of liked it. This is by no means a great novel, but I found the time travel rules fairly amusing (and frustrating, but it kind of delighted me in that regard as well). Also, I liked the character of Kazu. As a former barista I delighted in her character. A customer comes in and pisses off a ghost and gets herself cursed? Well, offer the ghost some coffee. The ghost is just an annoyance and the customer should have been focusing on the coffee and leaving the ghost alone anyway (This really is how 90% of baristas who work the night crew would act, I assure you. You did something stupid, we would note it for future stories and possibly even post a snarky sign telling customers not to do the stupid thing again).
Maybe it's not great, maybe it's more sentimental than a Spielberg movie aiming for an Oscar, but overall, I personally found a lot to like. Maybe it just caught me in the right mood... but I'll give it 3/5 stars
