Before Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting is a tour de force of fiction. The Barnes, a once-well-off Irish family, are in the midst of emotional and financial strain. Set during turbulent months in their claustrophobic town (think floods, droughts and the aftermath of recession), Murray expertly gives us each family member’s perspective of the same events – with flashbacks unravelling an intricate story of betrayal, crime and lust. Profound on the human condition, utterly gripping and peppered with comedy.
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we 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.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Out of stock
Paulina Cosby –
Review from Book Club Meeting:
It was a great discussion, as the reviews were very mixed indeed.
Some of us really loved the concept and very emotional twists of the book, whilst others disliked confusing names and the book’s universe rules which were a little difficult to follow.
We all agreed that we would all like to see the play on which this book was based, with some of us intending to read the rest of the series to follow what happens with the owners of the cafe.
Overall the book got 3.46 stars from HerSpace members, and we were left wondering, if you could travel in time to see someone without being able to change timeline, who would you visit?