Before the Coffee Gets Cold: a little bit of simplicity

A little bit of magical realism, a little bit of simplicity. Simple premise, simple values and principles, characters with relatively clear motives, and a lovely nostalgic and quaint atmosphere of a café that stays clean and warm with mostly the same decor over decades.

A café that allows you to time travel, with just the rules below:

Rules:

1. You can only time travel to meet people who have visited the cafe.
2. There is only one seat usually occupied by a ghost (that you must take, to travel into the past), and you cannot move from it while time travelling, or you get snapped back to the present.
3. Anything you do in the past will not change the present.
4. Your time in the past will begin from the time the coffee is poured, and you must return before the coffee gets cold.
5. If you don’t, you turn into the ghost sitting at that seat.
6. You can only travel back in time, or into the future, once in your life.

This book is bittersweet, about grief and regrets and moving back in time, and it encompasses the relationships of lovers, sisters, a mother and a daughter. Each one of them have regrets that weigh them down in the very present, and regrets that they carry on and live with. And although the present will not change, they yearn to go back to make a futile effort to say the things they’ve been meaning to say, or to get one more glance at this one person they forgot that they loved, just to see them glance back, flushed and confused, move in space obliviously, and drink their coffee in fluid motions. Something that is so precious but that we utterly take for granted. I just let the words sink into me as I was reading the book, and pretty much just let myself be transported. I don’t have a lot to comment on this book.

I think some decisions are grave, and there certainly are things we take for granted without a second thought, and we certainly do not go back on the actions we have taken and committed to. I don’t live with a lot of regrets. But, this still reminds me to be intentional. And as much as the circumstances are specific to this book, some feelings are universal.

All the characters are connected one degree apart, which is interesting, Each section of the four parts to this book are evenly divided, and play out on a unique set of relationships within the characters. It’s a very symmetrical book, and a very slim cover.