Before The Coffee Gets Cold: My Thoughts

A Novel About Loss, Grief, Love, And Moving Forward

Hello, my lovely bookish friend!!!

Welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books. Have you been reading this week? This week has been quite hectic, but yesterday I finally got to sit down with my book and read a few pages. 

Friday at work, we were discussing books and the topic came to Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Ever since reading the novel in June, I’ve had some thoughts I wanted to share, so that’s when I decided it will be my topic for this week’s letter.

Before reading the book, I’d already watched the movie. So, I was mostly familiar with the storyline. That gave me the room to focus on the things that were happening, and try to understand them better. Without, you know, rushing to find out what happens next. 

Doing that, I realised something. This book is often portrayed as a feel-good, warm, cosy read. Indeed, there are elements of that in the story, but in my opinion, at its heart, this book is about loss and living with grief. 

The story is set in a café where a special seat lets you travel in time; however, the past cannot be undone. There are four chapters, each focusing on a pair— two lovers, a married couple, two sisters and a mother and her daughter.

This will have spoilers, so proceed with caution!

In all these stories, one is about to lose the other and attempts time travel to prevent that loss. One’s lover leaves the country and breaks up with her. One’s husband loses his memory and no longer remembers her. One’s younger sister, whose repeated efforts at reconciliation she refused over and over again, dies in a road accident. One dies in childbirth never getting to meet her daughter. 

As the story progresses, the losses become more severe, more heartbreaking, more irreversible. Except for the first pair, who can just get back together, the rest have to live with their losses, living together with the grief. The wife has to live with her husband treating her like a stranger, the sister has to live in a world where her younger sister is no longer alive, and the mother has to live knowing her daughter will grow up never getting to know the love of her mother.

I like the story's idea: the past cannot be undone, but the future still gives you a chance. Yes, some losses are permanent, there’s no coming back from them, these are not scars you heal from, but maybe you can learn to live with them, alongside the pain. Travelling in time allows all these characters to do that, offering them some form of closure. 

I personally find this book quite heavy. Grief and loss to me are very heavy topics. The story does try to handle them in a warm and comforting way but still, I would refrain from calling it a feel-good, cosy book just because it’s set in a café. That was Welcome To The Hyunam Dong Bookshop that was What You Are Looking For Is In The Library but I’m not sure I’d put this book in the same box with them. 

What about you? Have you read Before The Coffee Gets Cold ? I'd love to hear about it!!!

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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.

Until then,

Joyie 🌻