Dans une petite ruelle de Tokyo se trouve Funiculi Funicula, un petit établissement au sujet duquel circulent mille légendes. On raconte notamment qu'en y dégustant un délicieux café, on peut retourner dans le passé. Mais ce voyage comporte des règles : il ne changera pas le présent et dure tant que le café est encore chaud. Quatre femmes vont vivre cette singulière expérience.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold was nothing like the other books in my TBR pile. Tiny and softspoken, entombed in a cacophony of big-mouthed, big-font hardbacks, it waited its turn and made itself known gently but poignantly.
You may have read that this book involves time travel, but really only in the same way that The Lord of the Rings was about a ring. It's about people, humanity really. For me to try to explain better is to waste words. This is not my kind of book. But it is now.
Un véritable coup de coeur ! J'y ai laissé quelques larmes, j'avoue, mais c'est si beau de voir que l'on peut trouver de petits bonheurs malgré la tristesse des évènements. Ce livre nous invite à remettre en perpective certaines situations, de créer nos propres petits bonheurs, de laisser nos remords et nos regrets derrière nous, mieux, de les accepter pour mieux vivre le présent.
So good you’ll forget to finish your coffee before it gets cold
5 stars
I found the first story a bit slow, it took a bit of time to explain the rules so I wasn’t too sure I’d like it. Everything changed (to me) from the second story onwards.
Sweet, a simply staged play or radio drama, a very constrained time travel premise, seems it could have been edited to be a tighter novella, but the loose threads aren't too frayed.
Oof. I loved this book! It's such an interesting take on time travel and I was gripped! The premise is that in a certain coffee shop in Japan it's possible to travel back in time, but there are rules. Among them; you can only travel back in time to meet someone who has been to the shop before, nothing you do to change the past will change the present, and you must return before the coffee gets cold. I would say it's a deep exploration of how we deal with regrets, and the ways in which small shifts of our own internal perspectives can have profound impacts on how we judge our situation, and the actions we are willing to take to achieve our own happiness. The narrative follows several different characters, each with something in the past that they long for, something that is a huge hindrance to their …
Oof. I loved this book! It's such an interesting take on time travel and I was gripped! The premise is that in a certain coffee shop in Japan it's possible to travel back in time, but there are rules. Among them; you can only travel back in time to meet someone who has been to the shop before, nothing you do to change the past will change the present, and you must return before the coffee gets cold. I would say it's a deep exploration of how we deal with regrets, and the ways in which small shifts of our own internal perspectives can have profound impacts on how we judge our situation, and the actions we are willing to take to achieve our own happiness. The narrative follows several different characters, each with something in the past that they long for, something that is a huge hindrance to their happiness in the present. And each one, even though they change nothing, return from the past and are able to use their experience to pursue and achieve a happiness that had not even conceived of. I feel there's a profound life lesson here, and I cannot recommend it enough. If you only choose one book to read from my list here, choose this one.
