Book Review: "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Books that are set in public places never fail to amaze me at how private and closed they can actually feel with all of these people, most of which do not know each other, locked in this space together. Some getting up to leave, some refusing to leave without an answer, some connected to others by chance and others in love with the other one. This book, if I can say this logically, reminded me a little bit of the atmosphere in Carson McCullers’ “The Ballad of the Sad Café” as it too has this almost private feel of a public place. The mood shifts between the situations of the characters but never changes massively. It is always a product of the environment being somewhat too quiet and undisturbed. Everything is just the way you need it to be, but then again that is the danger of the unexpected. It never arrives in moments of sheer panic and disillusion. Always when one least expects it.

That is true of this book entitled “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”. Set in a café that is around one hundred years old, we explore the strangeness of the atmosphere. Quiet and undisturbed with occasional oddities. For example: there are grand old clocks on the wall that add to the old aesthetic and make an extra calm whilst none of them point to the same time or even the correct time. It is these small changes that will enable characters such as Fumiko to come to terms with her boyfriend breaking up with her and will enable the people who work there to understand why the people sit there for so long, resisting the future, trying to live in the past alongside the café that once rejected its own electrical air conditioning in favour of a ceiling fan in the scorching heat.

This is one of my favourite quotations from the whole book and it really does represent the oddities in a different and more symbolic way:

“Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.”

It is something that I think it very strange for a character to say or even think about whilst drinking or serving coffee. The inner-depth of the café seems to be that there is an underlying sense of space. The attention paid to the outside world represents the requirement for this more inside, more private and almost underground one where secrets are told and where passions and private memories are relived even if they cannot be entirely.

I thought this book was a wonder. Though it was a little on the short side, I really enjoyed all the symmetry between public and private places, all the oddities and strangeness of the café and especially the way in which the characters almost seemed to notice what these oddities were but then did not. Each of the characters, each of the couples and even the servers have stories to tell and each of them is a little bit strange though filled out with human compassion and tales of woe. The atmosphere is not dreary, though it has an unusually uncomfortable depression about it. It is trying to tell us that maybe living in the past is not a good idea after all.