Tales from the Cafe: 2 (Before the Coffee Gets Cold)

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Working Within Limits in "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" – Chicago Review of Books". chireviewofbooks.com . Retrieved 2021-09-08. Who wouldn’t want to time travel? Well, you probably wouldn’t if you had to follow these very precise, arbitrary and convoluted rules - yes, even more so than the usual! So the characters in this story can time travel but only to the relatively recent past and they have to sit in a specific seat at a specific table - which they can’t leave once they time travel, which means they can’t leave the cafe - and only for the duration it takes for a coffee to cool, after which you have to drink it down or else risk turning into a ghost forever burdened to haunt the cafe. Also nothing you do in the past can alter the present/future. Yay, so much whimsical fun…

Before the Coffee Gets Cold' review: A chance to redo the past". CSMonitor.com . Retrieved 2021-09-08. But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . . despite the characters in this story being given a “second chance” to approach situations/people, the overwhelming feeling of knowing nothing can be done just hurts so badly, and i don’t want to delve any deeper into that, considering it would spoil way too much, but it sits in my chest, and it feels SO heavy. it felt so real, and being faced with reality sometimes feels a little too overwhelming, but as i mentioned before, the manner in which the author approaches this is so soft and so gentle. i felt safeAmong some faces that will be familiar to readers of Toshikazu Kawaguchi's previous novel, we will be introduced to: Last and most important. Drink the coffee before it gets cold or you'll be the ghost to occupy the chair. 🙂 I've slowly grown to really like the staff at the cafe, and the endearing and complicated reasons people want to travel to a different time. Whether it's redemption, self reflection, guilt or just a need for some closure, every story is simply yet beautifully told, with every patron having a unique story to tell. The series really does have the potential to go on and on, with countless people visiting the cafe.

TW: Death of sibling, life threatening pregnancy, death while giving birth, death of parent, Alzheimers, husband forgetting his wife.The second story, Husband and Wife, was much more promising, and it did end up making me cry. It was incredibly moving, and I will remember it for a long time into the future.

We can never truly see into the hearts of others. When people get lost in their own worries, they can be blind to the feelings of those most important to them.” With its atmospheric setting and imagery, simple prose and elements of magical realism, Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is an engaging and thought-provoking read. Though the occasional dispassionate tone and the repetitiveness in the text did bother me slightly, overall I did enjoy the read and look forward to reading the next installment in this series. Before the Coffee Gets Cold resists neat genre classification. The tags of fantasy, translated fiction, novel, play and realism all seem applicable. Kawaguchi’s novel was originally written as a play before it was adapted into novel form. Kelly, Joseph P. (2020-12-29). " "Before the coffee gets cold" Explores The Interiority of Time Travel". Harvard Crimson . Retrieved 2021-11-27. Kawaguchi has justified the second rule by stating that ‘I wanted the story to be realistic’. The time travellers are unable to change the present which creates a harsh sense of reality despite the magic of their time travel.Terry Hong of The Christian Science Monitor stated that the "narrative is occasionally uneven and tends to meander" but that the author "has a surprising, unerring ability to find lasting emotional resonance." [11] Ian J. Battaglia of the Chicago Review of Books wrote that "despite the occasional clumsiness, the narrative is deeply moving" and that the "characters are the real stars here, and their empathy for one another is powerful." [12] Courtney Rodgers of Book Riot compared the book to American comedy series Pushing Daisies, stating that the "charming short novel asks questions about time and how we choose to spend it." [13] 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).

But there are literally two paragraphs before that exactly describe how the character feels and what's she feels and why she feels that way. Despite a tantalizing premise the execution of time travel with ever added on new rules is sloppy. And the underlying morale of the four stories is basically highly conservative in my opinion. With simple prose, endearing characters (old and new) and stories that touch your heart, “Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot) is an impressive sequel. Though I did enjoy reading the first book in the series, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I must say that this book is an improvement over the first. Not only is the writing more fluid and less disjoint, but the characters are very well fleshed out and the stories are characterized by much more emotional depth and nuance. We get to know more about the café owner and his family and we finally get to know the story of the mysterious woman who occupies the time-travel chair in the café, vacating it only once a day, opening up an opportunity for others to embark on their journeys. Yes, there is a certain amount of repetitiveness (with each of the patrons being reminded of the rules) but that can be easily forgiven on account of how beautifully written these interconnected stories are. This book made me smile and yes, I did shed more than a few tears. I’m eagerly awaiting the third book in the series.Let's just say the cup of coffee was too cold for me and end it here for the more I write about it, the angrier I get. Women are not your incubator, please stop treating us like one. When you choose your UNBORN child over your wife, the apparent Love of your life, you essentially show her how replaceable she is. The rules of the time travel are clearly laid out in the book. Kazu oversees the magical activity, running through the travel guidelines before each customer begins their journey. If it is not possible to change the present no matter how hard you try while in the past, then why bother?”