Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
Over the past two years, I have been reading through Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series and really enjoying the quiet, moving, and thought-provoking stories in each instalment. It has quickly become a favourite series of mine so I was really excited to have received a copy of Before Your Memory Fades for Christmas. Although this was not my favourite instalment in the series, I still really enjoyed it and found it to be an interesting exploration on grief and continuing to move forward after loss.
Having moved to Hokkaido, as was foreshadowed in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Nagare is now looking after the café owned by his mother while she is away. With some familiar characters from the Funiculi Funicula and new characters from the Café Donna Donna, Kawaguchi introduces four new characters looking to go to a different time in Before Your Memory Fades. Yayoi, who lost her parents as a young child, is looking to go back to tell them exactly the effect that losing them at such a young age had on her; Todoroki wants to tell his wife that he won the prestigious award she always told him he could; Reiko is surprised by a visit from her now-deceased sister; and Reiji wants the opportunity to share his feelings with his friend before she has a life-changing surgery.
Grief and the ability to move on after a loss was a theme throughout Tales From the Café, but the exploration of it in Before Your Memory Fades is much darker than the previous instalment. The first two customers wanting to visit the future both feel that there is no point to their lives after their loss, with Todoroki planning a drastic measure now that he has achieved the thing his wife wanted for him. It is through their conversations with those that they have lost that they are able to see there is still purpose and value to their lives, in their relationships and their actions. Similarly, Reiko is struggling to accept the sudden and shocking death of her sister, her mental health deteriorating so that she is simply going through the motions. Reiko’s story, in particular, is an interesting depiction of the way that, although one conversation can put you in the right direction of recovery, there is still a long journey afterwards, as seen in her appearances in the final chapter of Before Your Memory Fades.
Although I enjoyed Before Your Memory Fades, I did find it a little less engaging than the previous two instalments in the series. This was partly a result of the change of setting, as I felt more connected to the Funiculi Funicula café and customers than to the ones featured in Before Your Memory Fades from the Café Donna Donna. Although Reiji and Nanako were interesting additions to the familiar characters from the previous instalments, I did not feel as invested in Reiji in particular and, since he is the main staff character, this definitely affected my overall enjoyment of the book. However, Reiji and Nanako’s story did prove to be the one that was the most emotional and impactful by the close of the narrative, which shows that I certainly did have some level of investment in them, even if it was not as much as the characters carrying over from the previous instalments.
I am so glad to have been able to continue on with this series in Before Your Memory Fades and I am looking forward to reading Before You Say Goodbye and other instalments in the future. This was an interesting expansion of the world of the Funiculi Funicula café, introducing us to the café run by Nagare’s mother and more of the history of the rules of time travel in these places. It piqued my interest, although I did miss the familiar characters and feel of the original café we were introduced to in Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I would still recommend this series to those who enjoy more literary leaning time travel, science fiction, or magical realism narratives, and the exploration of deep themes with a hopeful worldview.
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