Before the Coffee Gets Cold

 by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Serendipity --

I recently saw the quote by Viktor Frankl

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves".

This is a very powerful sentiment for me right now with what I am going through.  I saw positive comments about this book and decided to pick up a copy of a whim and I am so glad I did.

The story is set in Tokyo in a little basement cafe where it is rumoured people can go back in time.  The story starts with a young woman whose boyfriend broke up with her at the cafe, telling her he is going to the US to work.  She is devastated as she thought he was going to propose.  She is so startled she doesn't say anything and he leaves.

She goes back to the restaurant and says she wants to go back in time to tell her boyfriend she doesn't want him to go.  The hosts of the cafe tell her she can go back but nothing she does will change the present, she can only go back for the time it takes for a cup of coffee to cool off, if she doesn't return on time she will become a ghost (there is one lady ghost in the cafe).  She goes back to the time her boyfriend broke off with her.  She does tell him that she doesn't want him to go and as she returns to the present she hears him say he will be back in three years.

The next customer is the wife of a cafe customer who has rapidly developing Alzheimers.  Her husband has left a letter for her at the cafe but she hasn't wanted to read it.  She wants to go back in time to when her husband can still remember her.  They meet and she confirms to him that she knows about his diagnosis.  He seems relieved that she knows about it.  The letter he gave her tells her she doesn't have to feel obliged to stay with him.  However, this meetings cements her commitment to care for him whatever happens (she is a nurse).

The third story is about a young woman who runs a restaurant near the cafe. She is estranged from her family. Her sister had kept coming to Tokyo to try to convince her to come home and help run the family in.  The woman hides from her sister because she feels either her sister is jealous of her or that her sister doesn't want to run the inn and wants her to have the responsibility.  On the last time the sister comes to visit she is killed in a car accident.  The young woman is devastated, she feels reponsible for her sister's death as do her parents.  She goes back in time to the sister's last visit and the sister tells her that her dream was to have the two of them run the inn together.  The restuarant owner promises her sister she will go back and run the inn in her sister's memory.

The last story is about the wife of the owner of the cafe,  she dies in childbirth because of a heart condition,  Years after the woman died a young woman comes into the restaurant and goes back in time to meet her.  Later the woman asks to go into the future and she meets the young woman, realizing she is her daughter.  The woman had been worried that her daughter would be angry at her for not being around to raise her but the young woman thanks her for giving her her life.

While nothing changes about the sad things in these stories, all the characters seem to find a new perspective going forward.  

I think this book is amazing, at least for me right now!