time travel and coffee

It only took me one whole semester to complete this book... thanks to the amazing book club I get to run and be a part of on my campus! Our small but scholarly group spent this particular fall semester working our way through this Japanese bestseller (we made do with the English-translated version), enjoying conversations spurred by this novel's intriguing approach toward time travel. A lot of the observations we made centered around the fact that we were reading a translated text. We asked a lot of questions regarding how much cultural context we may have been lacking and what the substantial benefits of reading a text in its original language are. This book is broken up into four loose parts divided by sections appropriately titled to reflect the characters they focus on, though all of the characters are more intricately connected than a first glance betrays. One of the title pages from my edition of the book has a single rhetorical question posed in its center: "If you could go back, who would you want to meet?" This question seems to deeply resonate with this book's main themes, as it weaves itself into each character's narrative frame. People who work at the cafe as well as random customers (attracted by an urban legend of the cafe possessing a chair that allows one to travel back in time) all subject themselves to this question as they deal with an assortment of internal battles. From a woman desperate to gain closure after a heartless breakup in "The Lovers," a couple struggling with how dementia has changed both of their lives in "Husband and Wife," the tragedy of an unexpected, irreversible death in "The Sisters," and finally, the mind-bending scenario of a mother aware that she will not survive the birth of her daughter in "Mother and Child," the possibilities of what time travel can offer for each individual are creative and transcendent. I loved this book's approach to the idea of how the future can be changed despite the past staying the same. I also appreciated how, despite the cafe certainly imposing rules on its form of time travel, these rules aren't over the top or impossible to wrap your head around. They rather impose unforeseen challenges on those willing to sit and drink their coffee in the allotted amount of time given them to return to the past. This book made me really think about how I would answer the aforementioned rhetorical question, as well as a whole host of similar questions, and I enjoyed reading and discussing it with others.

One of my favorite quotes from Before the Coffee Gets Cold:

"Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out."

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