Book Review
Title: Tales From the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Before the Coffee Gets Cold Book 2)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction, Translation
Rating: 5 Stars
So I read Before the Coffee Gets Cold again recently and now that I’ve got my hands on the second and third books in this series I knew I had to continue. I did appreciate the character relationship map right at the beginning and I have read this one before but I couldn’t remember much about it so it’s going to be like reading it all over again for me and as with the first book it’s for interconnected stories starting with The Best Friend.
This is the story of Gohtaro and his best friend Shuichi, this story begins with Haruka getting married and Gohtaro knows that the lie he’s kept for the past 22 years needs to be brought out into the open. The lie is that he isn’t Haruka’s father as she believes, her real father was his best friend who died in a car accident along with his wife the same year Haruka was born. Knowing that she’s going to find out she’s an orphan when she gets married he decides to travel back into the past, to get a message from his friend for his daughter on her wedding day but he is also feeling quite guilty and sad that his role as her father will be coming to an end.
He travels into the past without any major problems, but the moment he sees his friend he begins crying even though he’s not aware of it. He tell Shuichi that he was sent to the past but the older version of himself in order to give him the surprise news of Haruka’s wedding. However, Shuichi doesn’t buy this for a minute and knowing the history and legends surrounding the café he knows that he must be dead in the future. Obviously his friend confirms this and also explains that his wife also died with him in the car accident and that he raised Haruka from that day on as his own. Together, the friends record a message for Haruka where it explains that Shuichi is actually her father but knowing his friend feels guilty about his death and the lie he’s told, he asks Haruka if she’s okay with having two fathers from this day on. While we don’t get to see the conclusion of this story right now I hope we do get to see it later on in the novel. Before we get into the second story Mother and Son, I wanted to mention that seeing Miki as a young child, eager to get into the family business was both heartbreaking and wholesome. Seeing Kazu taking on the role of older sister, and partially filling the gap that her mother’s death left behind was interesting and knowing Miki travels back in time to meet her mother a few years later adds to this sadness.
We are briefly introduces to another character, Kiyoshi, a retired police officer but we are focuses on the family of Kyoko, her mother, Kinuyo and her brother, Yukio. Kinuyo was an art teacher, who also taught Kazu before getting diagnosed with cancer and dying but her son, Yukio doesn’t attend the funeral and Kyoko feels that it is her fault but this isn’t the truth. Yukio visits the café after closing one night and meets Kazu and expresses his desire to go back into the past to see his mother once more. Kazu obviously grants this wish but through Yukio we learn that his mother was the only one to support his dream of becoming a famous potter even allowing him to move to Kyoto to apprentice under a famous potter. However, Yukio dreams has gone sour since he isn’t earning much money and then he is scammed by someone claiming to give him his own studio leaving him majorly in debt and the reason he couldn’t return for his mother’s funeral. As he travels into the past and sees his mother once more but she soon realises that her son is from the future and when the alarm sounds on his coffee she explains something to him. Kazu puts the alarm in the coffee because the ghost haunting the café is her own mother who died after not returning in time and he realises that he has to return or he would break his mother’s heart. Yukio returns to the present determined to live out his dream for his mother if for no other reason.
The third story is The Lovers, an echo from the first collection, and we do get to see those characters again. It turns out Fumiko and Goro did indeed get married after his return from America but this is the story of Fumiko’s colleagues, Asami and Katsuki Kurata. Asami and Kurata are a couple but when he is diagnosed with cancer and has less than six months to live, he knows he isn’t going to be alive long enough for them to get married. He plans to travel into the future and recruits Fumiko, he explains his situation to her and he asks Fumiko to bring Asami to the café if he is dead, or if he’s dead and Asami isn’t happy. Asami comes to café and claims to be married and happy but Kurata knows she’s lying but doesn’t call her out on it because he knows she will be happy so that his life and their relationship meant something. Seeing Fumiko and Goro again was amazing but I was feeling a little disappointed that a lot of these stories are based around people dying since in the first collection were people who were still alive yet driven apart by circumstances which made them more compelling.
The final story in this collection is The Married Couple, this is the story of Kiyoshi and Kimiko and it ends up being one of the most heart-breaking by far. Kiyoshi, is a retired detective wanting to go back in time to see his wife one last time to give her a present for her birthday. We learn Kiyoshi 30 years before was called away from a date with his wife, who waited at the café for him before being caught up in a mugging on her way home and fatally stabbed. Kiyoshi goes back in time and sees his wife passing along the necklace Kazu helped him pick out but it becomes more than that when he meets Kaname, Kazu’s mother who is heavily pregnant at the time and she explains the powers they have. The coffee pourers are always the women of the family and they can pour the coffee from the age of seven until the day they become pregnant where their powers then pass to the child. Kiyoshi realises her that Kazu is pregnant which is why Miki who had just turned seven poured his coffee for him.
Upon returning he explains to Kazu that he felt the same way as her when his wife died and he felt that he shouldn’t be happy when the exact opposite is the case. Kazu as we know poured the coffee for her mother Kaname, to see her father again but she never returned except as a ghost that now haunts the café. Right at the end Kazu speaks to her mother’s ghost and explains that she is going to be happy going forward and is going to raise her child surrounded by love and happiness. At this moment, Kaname’s ghost disappears being replaced by an old man meaning she has finally found peace knowing her daughter is going to be happy now. Honestly, I loved this second collection and can’t wait to read the third and for the fourth to be translated into English.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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