Cats, coffee, desserts and redemption - what’s not to like…?
I have noticed a tendency in Japanese novels for them to be constructed as intricate, interconnected puzzle pieces and this is surely one of the prime examples. I read it over a couple of days, and indeed it could easily be consumed in single sitting (wide line spacing and margins to pad out the page count so it can be sold for £10.99!) Indeed I am often tempted to create relationship diagrams like those found at the front of the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series…
In this story the connections are tightly woven and the epilogue cleverly reveals them to be circular. Yet despite this small canvas and limited group of characters it is still believable, these do feel like real people, with all their differences. There’s a lot of astrology but you don’t need to be a believer, it is just a device describe the charateristics and motivations of the people in the coffee shop, and the coffee shop itself is just a stage on which the characters are examined so this is a great read even if you don’t like the mumbo-jumbo, or even if you don’t like magical realism - read ot anyway!
All of our characters find their lives improved by the cat hosts of the coffee shop and we could all benefit from some self-analysis and reflection on what we want out of lives.
A delightful, moving book with a supremely satisfying ending. Look after those cats, the universe works on the mirror principle and you’ll never know when that kindness might be repaid.