Before we forget kindness

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Picador

Review: Chantel Erfort

Having finished last year reading countless journal articles and academic texts for the purposes of writing a research proposal, I was eager to spend some time during the festive season reading something somewhat lighter.

While Before we forget kindness was sad at times, I found it to be the perfect holiday companion – a collection of four short stories I could dip into when I had some free time.

What connects the four stories – and those included in the four other books in Kawaguchi’s Before the coffee gets cold series - is Finiculi Finicula, a charming little coffee shop in Tokyo where you can travel back in time.

There are rules though… Among others, there’s only one seat you can sit in – and may not leave - during your time travel, you cannot do anything in the past to change the future, and you have to return to the present before your coffee gets cold - hence the name of the series and its first book.

The latest in the series tells the stories of people wanting to travel back in time to find closure and move forward with their lives. There’s a little boy who wants to put on a brave face for his parents who’ve decided to separate; a young woman who defied her father by getting married to a man she had just met; a young woman who missed the chance to declare her love to her Valentine; and young widow who is desperate for her late husband to name their baby.

What I loved most about the book was the simplicity of the stories and how through his stories, Kawaguchi also shares with the reader some of the nuances of Japanese culture.

Quite useful too, is the character map at the start of each book which explains who each character is and what their connections to the café and the other characters are.

I’m currently reading the second book in the series – Tales from the Café – and am starting to feel like this is a series that can continue for as long as the writer is able to come up with new themes to link his characters’ stories.

The books are translated into English from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot.

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