Book Review: Before Your Memory Fades (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #3) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Geoffrey Trousselot (Translator)
“People’s true feelings are not in plain sight. The other person might not be thinking anything, but there is a tendency to just assume what the other is feeling without reaching out and asking.”
DA-DING-DONG
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot), Book #3 in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series takes us back to a special café where customers can embark on a journey to a different time. However, unlike the first two books of the series which were set in Café Funiculi Funicula in Tokyo, we meet Nagare and Kazu along with her seven-year-old daughter Sachi at Café Donna Donna in Hakodate. Nagare’s mother, Yukari who owns and runs the café is currently traveling, leaving Nagare and Kazu to fill in. The rules of time travel are the same (among which are the fact that nothing can change the present and the time traveler needs to return to the present before the specially brewed coffee served to him/her gets cold) and the time-traveling chair is only available when its occupant (the ghostly figure of an elderly gentleman) temporarily leaves his seat.
“Things that you put off saying until tomorrow are sometimes never said.”
As the narrative progresses, we meet the café staff, regular customers and those who come into the café for an opportunity to travel back/forth in time among whom is a young woman who desires to meet her deceased parents who she lost when she was just an infant, a renowned comedian who wants to share the news of an accomplishment with his deceased wife, a woman who is unable to cope with the loss of her sister and a young man who wants to share his feelings with the woman he loves. We also get to meet, Sachi, Kazu’s seven-year-old daughter whose fascination with the book,“What If the World Were Ending Tomorrow? One Hundred Questions” leads to quite a few interesting conversations.
In simple yet elegant prose, with elements of fantasy and magical realism and an interesting cast of characters, the author touches upon themes of love, loss, grief and moving on. While I did enjoy the characters and their stories and some beautifully penned passages, I felt the narrative to be repetitive (at this point there was no need to repeat the rules of time travel so many times throughout the book) and lacking in depth as compared to the previous installments. The characters, their emotions and their motivations could have been explored further. I also wanted to know more about the occupant of the time travel chair. I’m guessing I’ll have to wait for any future installments to satisfy my curiosity.
Overall, while I did enjoy this book, I didn't find it as emotionally hard-hitting or satisfying as the previous installment, Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café, which remains my favorite among the three books in the series.
I paired my reading with the wonderful audio narration by Kevin Shen which I thoroughly enjoyed. To fully appreciate the stories and the characters, I strongly recommend reading/listening to the books in series order.
“Inside every person is an inherent capability to make it through any kind of difficulty. Everyone has that energy. But sometimes when that energy flows via our anxiety valve, the flow can be restricted. The greater that anxiety, the greater the strength needed to open the valve and release the energy. That strength is empowered by hope. You could say that hope is the power to believe in the future.”
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