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I spotted this when I was browsing in a bookshop. I love time travel paradoxes, the premise and setting of this sounded intriguing, and I was charmed by the cover (shards of aqua foil, plus a cat that isn't in the book). How shallow I am. This is my penance.

What would you do?

Who wouldn’t want to travel in time, if there was no danger? The main problem would be choosing when and where to go. The rules in this scenario are so limiting, choice is easy. Plus, there’s a sort of reverse butterfly effect: whatever you see or say, won’t change the present. That sounds safe - but also pointless: more like watching a film reel than actually travelling.

It’s set in a 140-year old Japanese basement café in the present day. No windows, so ��A permanent sepia hue stained the café interior��. It has three counter seats, and three two-people tables, three clocks, and three staff.

Each of the four sections focus on a particular situation that prompts a woman to to see loved-ones they cannot otherwise see, or get answers to important questions. There's a backdrop of recurring characters and a continuous, chronological narrative.

The willing suspension of disbelief

It’s especially important to suppress incredulity in time travel stories, which often don’t (and can’t) explain the mechanics. The key word is “willing��. There was too much I disliked for me to suspend the large amounts of disbelief required. I read the whole book, even though I didn’t enjoy it, in the vain hope I’d be won over. The saving grace is that it’s quite short.


Image: John Tenniel’s illustration of the White Rabbit, worrying about being late.

The rules

�� You must return “before the coffee gets cold��, otherwise (view spoiler)[ you become the next café ghost (hide spoiler)].
�� You must sit in a specific seat and not move from it.
�� That seat is occupied most of the time (view spoiler)[ by the café ghost, so you have to wait for her daily trip to the loo (hide spoiler)].
�� You must not challenge the person sitting in the time travel seat (view spoiler)[ or she will curse you (hide spoiler)].
�� You can only meet someone who has been to the café.
�� You can only use the time travel seat once.
�� You can travel to the past or the future, but the rules make the future more problematic, so few people do it.

The title rule had promise, but the others made it less interesting. I felt as if some had been added later to make the story work - but they failed.

I now wonder if it would work better without the time travel element! Just tell the four poignant stories of semi-connected women (ideally in a more positive way), where they find peace from information via more conventional means, such as a cache of old letters or a long-lost relative.

The flaws in the rules

Not plot spoilers, but I want to remember what I disliked, without highlighting those features to people who enjoyed the book. I don’t think it's possible to tell a time travel story without any contradictions or unanswered questions, but this has far too many, imo.
(view spoiler)[
�� How cold is “cold��, and who decides?
�� Why does no one maximise their time by avoiding milk and keeping the cup as full as possible for as long as possible?
�� There is no attempt to give even a magical explanation for how a customer gets to the time and date they pick.
�� The penalty for being late is severe, but time travellers don’t have much control over when they return.
�� Time travel won’t change the present - unless you become a ghost. That’s a pretty big “change��!
�� The staff acknowledge that although you can’t change the present, “the future hasn’t happened yet��, so it’s not much of a rule.
�� The ghost’s curses are unpleasant but ineffectual, so rather pointless.
�� When someone is late and becomes the new ghost, does the old ghost die properly?
�� What happens when a customer recognises the ghost, but doesn’t realise they are a ghost?
�� In the story, the café has been written about, albeit as a possible urban legend. Are there any missing person reports about people who became ghosts?
(hide spoiler)]

The flaws in the book

Not plot spoilers, but I want to remember what I disliked, without highlighting those features to people who enjoyed the book.
(view spoiler)[
�� There’s a lot of male gaze. Women are always described by their clothes, skin, hair, and curves. It’s the quantity, more than specific examples: “A revealing yellow tube top��, and a highschooler whose “naturally long eyelashes accentuated her pretty features��.
�� Several of the situations involve women sacrificing almost everything for others. That’s tricky from a male author, but perhaps that goes down better in Japan.
�� The characters were not very distinct. I rather lost track of who was who, even though I took notes and read it in two sittings, on consecutive days. Having so many names beginning with K didn’t help: Kazu, Kumi, Kohtake, Kei.
�� Lazy exposition comes by citing a magazine article about the café, and yet there's a lot of repetition.
�� Page 1 says Fumiko had been Goro’s girlfriend for three years, but page 46 says they first met only two years ago, and no, it’s nothing to do with time travel. Just sloppy.
(hide spoiler)]

Other things are just odd. Had I enjoyed the book, I might have thought them charming quirks.
(view spoiler)[
�� The café is more than 140 years old, and is called , after the 1880 song to commemorate the first funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius. Why?
�� A woman who runs a café opposite - directly opposite - comes in for a coffee every day before work.
�� Different staff make coffee in totally different ways, but the price is the same, whether made by pressing a single button on a machine or hand-dripping it slowly.
�� There are three antique clocks, all showing different times, which confuses everyone. Later, we learn the middle one tells the correct time, which wouldn’t be difficult to ascertain.
(hide spoiler)]