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Tales from the Cafe: 2 (Before the Coffee Gets Cold)

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Life in Japan on the strength of this novel seems even stranger than I had imagined, even after learning about Godzilla, apparently if you are working for a friend in their small business and they die, you can just take over the business, and raise their child as your own and nobody will complain or cause you any problems, not the law, the banks, or even any grandparents. This is your typical time travel in a Japanese coffee shop novel this is not a spoiler, the kind of novel in which this was a spoiler would be a bit more fun I think , apparently it is the sequel to a similarly named earlier novel which I have never read and which I don't plan to read but then again I didn't plan to read this either, so I just can't tell. don't mind me, just adding more and more books to my currently reading because all of my library loans are coming in at once and making me into a juggler except with books. I was disappointed by this collection of short interconnected stories. 1.5 stars so it will be 2 stars. This could work in a performance where the audience doesn’t have the script in front of them, but in a novel it feels as though the author is assuming their readers are morons who can’t recall the events of a few sentences prior.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold' review: A chance to redo the past". CSMonitor.com . Retrieved 2021-09-08. One issue as with the first book is that the author seems to think the readers have short term memory and tends to remind us time and again about the rules of the cafe.The characters - Kei, Kazu, Nagare - all seemed like the same person and were basically interchangeable because their personalities were that indistinct and irrelevant. The Alzheimer’s storyline felt especially pointless - the wife wants to talk to her husband about the letter he wrote, that was handed to her in the present, that she refused to read, but she wants him to tell her about it in the past? Just read it in the present! And the future storyline - what, she just “knows” that she’s going to die in childbirth? Gimme a break. The rules of the time travel are clearly laid out in the book. Kazu oversees the magical activity, running through the travel guidelines before each customer begins their journey. This book is divided into 4 stories named The Best Friend,Mother and Son,The Lovers and The Married Couple featuring Gohtaro ,Yukio, Kurata and Kiyoshi.Each story has it’s own beauty and it will give you much contentment. More annoyingly, Toshikazu Kawaguchi explains everything the characters feel, making the stories overly simple and sentimental. Somewhere the following passes someone’s mind: But none of those feelings could be formed into words.

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes Tales from the Cafe, a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer. It is definitely a unique take on time travel that I found quite fascinating with rules that must be followed. I find the characters not as engaging and interesting even though their stories sound interesting enough. Maybe their stories do not do much for me personally.

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Last and most important. Drink the coffee before it gets cold or you'll be the ghost to occupy the chair. 🙂 But then...a severe damper arrives. My parade is rained on. Stormy weather comin' in. Insert other precipitation metaphors.

The short novel arguably occupies a space known as ‘magic realism’ as Kawaguchi adds fantastical elements to the familiar space of the coffee shop. Before the Coffee Gets Cold also speaks to the modern fascination with time travel writing as popularised by H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine. second story: a woman devoting her life to care for her husband who has dementia. i don't have a problem with this one by itself, but after reading the other stories, there is a theme here. Meet more wonderful characters in the next captivating novel in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, Before We Say Goodbye , releasing November 14, 2023!People tend to feel happy when spring arrives, especially after a cold winter. When spring begins, however, cannot be pinpointed to one particular moment. There is no one day that clearly marks when winter ends and spring begins. Spring hides inside winter. We notice it emerging with our eyes, our skin and other senses. We find it in new buds, a comfortable breeze and the warmth of the sun. It exists alongside winter.” third story: a woman losing her freedom to run her family's inn after her little sister passed. guilt-tripped by her friend saying "that's what your sister would've wanted." no, your sister could not respect that your dreams were different than hers

Perhaps if I read the collection which preceded this, 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold', I would have appreciated or understood more about this book. This is quite a short book, so it’s hard to say much about it when trying to avoid spoilers, but yet again this book just filled my soul. I adored the atmosphere Kawaguchi created around the café, how he expanded on the lore of the café itself, as well as on the history of those who work there. On top of this beautiful exploration we are also introduced to new people and are absorbed into new tales. Throughout this book, whilst I was reading it I really felt a sense of peace, of beauty. I cried, as with the first one, when I finished reading it. It’s such a touching and well written plot. And I love the path that Kawaguchi went down for this book.As for repetitive, the book, while a novel, is in many ways really just four short stories that are essentially variations of the same set up and (to a degree at least) the same conclusion. When looking up the author I discovered that he was a play writer, which does not surprise me in the slightest. The book really is a play in novel format down to the entire book taking place in the same room (one of the time travel rules is that you can't leave your seat). Mechanically, from a storytelling and writing point of view, Before the Coffee Gets Cold needs a complete overhaul.

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