This was the last of my ‘Japanese books to read before our trip to Japan’. Before the coffee gets cold is set in a café/coffee shop tucked away in a side street in Tokyo with a magical realism element in that if you sit in a certain seat in the café, and follow a certain set of rules, you can travel back to a previous time during the life of the café and talk to and interact with the people who were there on that day. When you finish your coffee you will return to the present, and you must drink it before it gets cold.
Like most of the Japanese literature I’ve read, the book is slow moving and contemplative, and looks quietly but meaningfully at normal human relationships – regret, loss and misunderstanding and offers the protagonists a chance at some (often heartbreaking) redemption or just a chance to say what they wished they had said before.
I had a great trip by the way!
Sarah Wray Writer 