Book of the Month: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

This is the second book by a Japanese author to feature as a book of the month this year. This time the author is Toshikazu Kawaguchi, a playwright who is also the author of a series of short novels about a Tokyo café where patrons can time travel.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the first book in the series, and also the most important instruction to the would-be time traveller. You get a magical cup of coffee and you have the length of time before it gets cold to drink it, or get trapped in the past.

There is no explanation given for why people can travel through time in the café. For me, the story is better for not trying to explain it. The mechanism is mysterious and magical and ultimately, it doesn't matter how people time travel as much as who travels and why. 

There are four stories in this book - a girlfriend wanting to see her boyfriend again, a wife wanting to see her husband before dementia took him away, a woman who wants to see her sister, and a mother wanting to see her daughter. They are all poignant. The wife's story packed the biggest emotional punch, but they were all a blend of hopeful melancholy.

My only criticism would be the occasional 'fact drops'. For example, the author references Pablo Picasso and then includes a potted history of Picasso's career and transitions between his artistic styles and periods. I don't think the story needed that, but this was written for a Japanese audience originally and I simply don't know how au fait that audience would be with Picasso or the concept of artists having different stylistic periods. (Being honest, the context was probably necessary for the majority of English readers too.)

I bought this book in TK Maxx on a bit of a whim, won over by the cover blurb. The overall design of the cover is very attractive too. However, while I enjoyed the concept and the stories of the different time travellers, I don't plan to seek out the rest of the series. 

Book idea - the resurgence of primitive religion

Here's another book idea I've got, based around studies of primitive religious motifs/magic and contemporary culture and religious trends. I've got a few ideas written down somewhere, but I'm not sure where. I can only find notes on two potential chapters. So I'm constructing the following sections mainly from memory:

Return of the Fertility Goddesses
The fetishization of over-sized breasts in our culture, linked to the fertility/grain goddesses of the ancient near east, who are always large-breasted and wide-hipped. The cosmetic search for perfection linking into an ancient represntation of the Divine.

Representative and Sympathetic Magic in a Health Store Near You
The growth of homeopathic remedies aligned to sympathetic magic in shamanistic/druidic cultures and how they both feed off the primitive religious idea that becase a looks like b, a must somehow influence b.

Tribalism and the Shamans Battling Evil on our Behalf
A worked up version of my Is Football a Religion? article published several years ago on a football website (and now no longer online it seems), that identifies players as representatives of the tribe doing battle in an artificial realm against the forces of the 'outsider/other' (the archetypal format of 'evil'). The huge growth in sport as recognisable tribal affiliation over the last few years (including ceremonial tribal vestments ie replica shirts).

Spirituality Without Spiritual Conflict
The rise in 'local gods' and spirit guides, particularly in angelology divorced from the Christian context. Belief in the spiritual but not in forces of good/evil. The moral neutrality of 'being spiritual' paralleling the tribal vision of the spiritual realm which is there to be interacted with, and used by the 'wise'.

The Power of Words
Ironically a powerful sub-theme in the major monotheistic religions - Scripture as a talisman charm to ward off evil in phylacteries, Qu'ranic inscriptions, learning by rote, plastering Bible verses on all sorts of tat. Reference to the 'cursing stone' of Carlisle. The return of a qabbalistic belief in the power of words over a subject.

If I can find my other notes I'm sure I've got enough ideas to make quite an interesting book.