Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series #1)

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This book is best served with a hot cup of coffee. As whimsical as it is charming, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is about a magical café that grants its customers the ability to travel through time. The beauty of Kawaguchi’s writing will fully immerse you and you’ll wish you could get a seat at this quirky café.

*NOW AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER*

*AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*

The first book in the five million-copy bestselling magical realism series

If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Prepare to meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer in order to:

• confront the man who left them
• receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer's
• see their sister one last time, and
• meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

Meet more wonderful characters in the rest of the captivating Before the Coffee Gets Cold series:

• Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Book 1)
• Tales from the Cafe (Book 2)
• Before Your Memory Fades (Book 3)
• Before We Say Goodbye (Book 4)
• Before We Forget Kindness (Book 5)
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781335430991
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Series:	Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series , #1
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He has produced, directed and written for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. His works as a playwright include COUPLE, Sunset Song and family time. His play Before the Coffee Gets Cold won the grand prize at the Suginami Drama Festival. Before the Coffee Gets Cold has become an international bestseller and has been adapted for the screen in Japan.

Editorial Reviews

09/21/2020

Japanese playwright Kawaguchi’s evocative English-language debut is set in a tiny Tokyo café where time travel is possible. In four connected tales, lovers and family members take turns sitting in the chair that allows a person to travel back in time for only as long as it takes a single cup of coffee to cool. In “Husband and Wife,” a nurse goes back in time to visit her husband before his Alzheimer’s erased her from his memory; in “The Sisters,” a woman visits her younger sister, who died in an accident while trying to visit her, to apologize for not seeing her. Kawaguchi’s characters embark on lo-fi, emotional journeys unburdened by the technicalities often found in time travel fiction—notably, they are unable to change the present. The characters learn, though, that even though people don’t return to a changed present, they return “with a changed heart.” Kawaguchi’s tender look at the beauty of passing things, adapted from one of his plays, makes for an affecting, deeply immersive journey into the desire to hold onto the past. This wondrous tale will move readers. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series

"Endearing." —New York Times Book Review

"The narrative is deeply moving." —Chicago Review of Books

"A complete page-turner from the start to the end.”—Buzzfeed

"Heartwarming, quirky, and wistful." —HuffPost

"Interwoven into what initially feels like a whimsical escape are existential conundrums of love and loss, family and freedom, life and death." —Christian Science Monitor

"Charming." —Star Tribune

From the Publisher

Arina Li’s nuanced performance highlights the longing and confusion of four hopeful time travelers in this quirky and touching story. Hidden away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s main streets, urban legend claims, is a café that can transport people in time. Li’s lively voice and high tones conjure a mystical atmosphere within the nondescript café. The desperation and frustration of the time travelers can be both humorous and heartbreaking as they must follow myriad rules (including drinking the coffee before it gets cold) and face some difficult revelations. Li’s narration beautifully conveys the cultural aspects of the café visitors’ interactions and the book’s insightful message. M.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Arina Li’s nuanced performance highlights the longing and confusion of four hopeful time travelers in this quirky and touching story. Hidden away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s main streets, urban legend claims, is a café that can transport people in time. Li’s lively voice and high tones conjure a mystical atmosphere within the nondescript café. The desperation and frustration of the time travelers can be both humorous and heartbreaking as they must follow myriad rules (including drinking the coffee before it gets cold) and face some difficult revelations. Li’s narration beautifully conveys the cultural aspects of the café visitors’ interactions and the book’s insightful message. M.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile