Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A Novel

272 pages

English language

Published Jan. 7, 2021

ISBN:
978-1-335-47478-0
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4 stars (6 reviews)

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.

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?

7 editions

Quel étrange café que le Funiculi Funicula.

4 stars

Je repars au Japon le mois prochain… alors, pour me mettre dans l’ambiance, j’ai décidé de lire ce succès de librairie japonais (plus d’un million d’exemplaires vendus !)

Quel étrange café que le Funiculi Funicula. Pour nous, il est étrange car exotique (un café, minuscule, en sous-sol, cela n’étonnera sans doute pas les japonais… mais c’est étonnant selon nos critères européens) mais aussi, et surtout, à cause cette capacité qu’il a à permettre, sous conditions drastiques, de voyager dans le temps.

"Dans une petite ruelle de Tokyo se trouve Funiculi Funicula, un petit établissement au sujet duquel circulent mille légendes. On raconte notamment qu’en y dégustant un délicieux café, on peut retourner dans le passé. Mais ce voyage comporte des règles : il ne changera pas le présent et dure tant que le café est encore chaud."

Vous aurez compris que, vu les conditions, il n’est point ici question de …

Le café qui réchauffe le coeur

5 stars

Un véritable coup de coeur ! J'y ai laissé quelques larmes, j'avoue, mais c'est si beau de voir que l'on peut trouver de petits bonheurs malgré la tristesse des évènements. Ce livre nous invite à remettre en perpective certaines situations, de créer nos propres petits bonheurs, de laisser nos remords et nos regrets derrière nous, mieux, de les accepter pour mieux vivre le présent.

My review of Before The Coffee Gets Cold

5 stars

Oof. I loved this book! It's such an interesting take on time travel and I was gripped! The premise is that in a certain coffee shop in Japan it's possible to travel back in time, but there are rules. Among them; you can only travel back in time to meet someone who has been to the shop before, nothing you do to change the past will change the present, and you must return before the coffee gets cold. I would say it's a deep exploration of how we deal with regrets, and the ways in which small shifts of our own internal perspectives can have profound impacts on how we judge our situation, and the actions we are willing to take to achieve our own happiness. The narrative follows several different characters, each with something in the past that they long for, something that is a huge hindrance to their …

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rated it

2 stars
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rated it

5 stars