5 stars for Tales from the Cafe (Before the Coffee Gets Cold book 2) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi |《Reread》.
After reading this book a second time, I decide to change my rating for this book from previous 4-star rating to a 5.
I have no idea why I didn't feel it the last time I read this book, but perhaps the level and depth I felt then was different. Reading this book again now, I am very much touched by the second and third story; they are sad yet heartwarming at the same time. Also, I feel that the last story is brilliantly crafted. Through a newly introduced character, detective Kiyoshi, the author manages to do an excellent summary of the people who have travelled back in time. To quote "...over the last thirty years, forty-one people have sat in that chair and travelled back in time. They each had their own reasons for doing so, to meet a lover, a husband, a daughter and so forth, but of those forty-one people, four returned to the past to meet someone who had died. There were two last year, one seven years ago, and then there was your mother twenty-two years ago... four people." Through detective Kiyoshi, readers are reminded once again of the stories of key characters who have returned to the past even after knowing that it is not possible to change the present no matter how hard they try while in the past.
Whether a person chooses to go back in time to visit a family member or a good friend, or visit someone in the future in this cafe, time-travelling to right a wrong does not mean having to change the present, which in any case, the rule does not allow the present to be changed, but even so, without changing the present, it does make a difference to see that someone again. There is always something to learn from the people who have gone back. Regardless of their reasons for returning to the past, there is one thing common among these people - they found inner peace upon their return from the time travel.
Once again, after reading this book, all I want to do is to find one such time-travelling cafe and be a regular there. Why is it that this kind of cafe only exist in books and not in real life?
What will you do if you are given the chance to return to the past?
Who will you want to meet?
Publisher: Picador; Main Market edition
Publication date: 17 Sep 2020
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In a back alley in 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.
With faces both familiar and new, Tales from the Cafe follows the story of four patrons who visit to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula's time-traveling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each one must face up to the past to move on with their lives.
Kawaguchi's wistful and heartwarming new novel once again invites the reader to ask themselves, "What would you do if you could travel back in time?"
*Blurb from FantasticFiction*
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