Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before Your Memory Fades is the third book in the series, Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I enjoyed the first two books and reviewed them, see here and here.
Before Your Memory Fades continues with the time travel story of a café where people can come and travel in time if certain conditions are met, only stay for as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee, one must leave before the coffee gets cold or they will remain trapped as a ghost and essentially die once they get released as ghosts (as with the woman from the first book who was released in the second book), one can only sit in the time travel chair and cannot move or they will be pulled back to their present, and present cannot change regardless of what people do or say when time travelling. The difference between this book and the first two is that the story is not based in a time travel café Funiculi Funicula in Tokyo like the first two books but in Donna Donna café on the hillside of Mount Hakodate in northern Japan, and the fact the story is based here goes back to the first book and explains why Nagare Tokita, the owner of the Tokyo café was not there when his wife Kei time travelled 15 years ago to see their daughter knowing she might die in childbirth. The reader wondered in the first book why was he not there and what the phone conversation between him and Kei was, and this gets explained and resolved in this book, which provides a nice connection to the book series just like in the second book there was a more detailed story of the woman ghost. Throughout this book, there is mentioning of previous time travellers, all of whom we met in the previous books, which I really enjoyed.
Before Your Memory Fades thus introduces some new characters who frequent Donna Donna café along with old ones such as Nagare Tokita who works in Donna Donna café temporarily to cover for his mother who is currently in the US trying to help a customer find a father, due to time travel café’s rule also being one can only see people who have visited the café so the American tourist who heard about the Donna Donna café came for nothing. It seems as if the author further engaged with characters in the book so we learn more about Nagare, which was good and pleasant to read because in the first two books, despite being a café owner, the story is not centred on him whereas here there is more of his personal appearance, feeling and general behaviour. Before Your Memory Fades also introduces some new characters who frequent Donna Donna café and whose stories we learn, along with reading about their time travel and reasons for that.
As with other books, the author engages us with time travel and asks us to think about who we would see and what we would say if we had a chance to time travel without being able to change anything. The more I read these books, the more I understand the meaning of just going back in time to see someone who means something to the time traveller and just say thanks or understand what happened. It is about closure or just holding the hand of a beloved person again. Very meaningful. Beautiful. Inspiring.
I have a fourth book on my to-read list and the 5th one is pre-ordered on Amazon. I look forward to reading further.
Thank you for reading!