Before Your Memory Fades

Product Information

This was actually better than I expected considering that many people were saying that this was the weaker book out of this series. Although the style is the same of all three books, I enjoy them, and especially like listening to the audiobooks. When you give a gift to someone who is striving to achieve their dreams, you have to give them the most cherished thing you have. In this 3rd instalment, both Nagare and Kazu went to Café Donna Donna (originally owned by Nagare’s mom, Yukari) located in Hakodate to replace Yukari for a while as she had gone to America.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s touching Before Your Memory Fades, translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, explores the age-old question: what would you do if you could travel back in time? The novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold is adapted from a 1110 Productions play by Kawaguchi, which won the 10th Suginami Drama Festival grand prize.I would have liked to know more about the mysterious owner of Café Donna Donna, Yukari, who ran off to America to help a boy find his parents. I also absolutely loved every single character, unlike Tales from the Cafe, which was a little bit more difficult in terms of my liking towards a specific character. While I did enjoy the characters and their stories and some beautifully penned passages, I felt the narrative to be repetitive (at this point there was no need to repeat the rules of time travel so many times throughout the book) and lacking in depth as compared to the previous installments. Besides those ones existing in Japan, I thought at first that such a cafe is there somewhere in America as well. Interwoven into what initially feels like a whimsical escape are existential conundrums of love and loss, family and freedom, life and death.

I found the story about a daughter traveling back to confront her parents both heartbreaking and moving. yet compelling meaning of life itself - and how relationships with loved ones can impact your life - even when they are long gone. The rules of going back to the past are explained more succinctly, almost mockingly of their rigidity which is different to the previous books, where they were explored more thoroughly.Having read the first two, we can attest it will be just the thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon. This is the third book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series and like it’s predecessors it is book comprising of four tales about time travel once drinking a particular coffee in a particular cafe - this book moves events to Hakodate but with some familiar characters . Light and delightful ways of writing despite how the author still having that same writing habit like before; to repetitively info dumping stuff he already mentioned in each story.

They cannot change the present with this trip, but the various people who choose to undertake the journey are themselves changed.The reason for that is simple: if we let everyone who dies be a cause for unhappiness, that would mean people are being born to become unhappy. Among some familiar faces from Toshikazu Kawaguchi's previous novels, readers will also be introduced to:A daughter who begrudges her deceased parents for leaving her orphanedA comedian who aches for his beloved and their shared dreamsA younger sister whose grief has become all-consumingA young man who realizes his love for his childhood friend too lateTranslated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot and featuring signature heart-warming characters and wistful storytelling, in Before Your Memory Fades, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time? There are parts of the book that are a bit repetitive (the repetition of the rules multiple times) but overall I always come out of my reading of these novels feeling uplifted and satisfied.