Staff Pick: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

While fiction may get mileage from imagining travelling back in time to avert a terrible crisis or fighting killer robots, most of us are more likely to imagine going back in time for a much more mundane reason; to redo that conversation. Maybe we regret what we said, a cutting remark we didn’t mean, or something that came out the wrong way. Or maybe we regret what we didn’t say. 

“I’m sorry.”

“I love you.” 

“Goodbye.”

This is the time-travel at the heart of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s 2015 novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold. 

In a small basement café in Tokyo, patrons can travel back in time, though with restrictions. They must be sitting in a particular seat, which they cannot leave, they can only talk to someone who has been to the café, and they much come back before the coffee gets cold. 

Most importantly, nothing they do will change the present. A person who dies will still die, a job lost is still lost. This wrinkle ensures that in each of the four stories that make up the novel, the focus is not on the characters changing the past but rather freeing themselves of it.

Despite some sombre themes, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a warm and easy book. The characters are likeable and relatable and their stories, while bittersweet, tend to hope and optimism. The novel feels like it was originally a play with a fixed location and a small cast, but it suits the clear and accessible style of Kawaguchi’s writing.

Fundamentally it is a pleasingly light book that pairs well with sitting in a park in the sun or settling down to a late breakfast and a nice cup of coffee.

'Before the Coffee Gets Cold' is available in the libraries as books, eBooks, and eAudiobooks.

Review by Eoin Dardis, Library Staff Officer.