Before the Coffee Gets Cold Literary Elements

Novel; Magical Realism

The novel takes place entirely in a basement cafe in Tokyo called Funiculi Funicula. Because of the cafe's unexplained magical properties, customers can briefly visit the past or future.

The novel is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator; the point of view shifts between the book's major and minor characters.

The tone is comic and sentimental; the mood shifts between serene, ominous and heartfelt.

The novel features a different protagonist in each of the four parts of the book: Fumiko, Kohtake, Hirai, and Kei. Corresponding antagonists include Goro, Fusagi, Kumi, and Nagare.

Each of the novel's time travelers wants to go backward or forward in time in the hope of changing their present predicaments; however, the rules dictate that nothing they do while time traveling will affect their present circumstances.

The novel reaches its climax when Kei travels to the future and meets Miki, the daughter she will lose her life giving birth to. Kei understands that the benefit of time travel is that it can change a person's perspective and give them the strength needed to overcome their difficulties.

At the end of the third part of the book, Kei rubs her pregnant belly while Nagare looks on and asks himself whether she will be able to give up the baby. This foreshadows the fourth part of the novel, in which Kei has to decide whether she will risk her life to give birth.

When Fumiko asks whether it is possible to travel to the future, Kazu replies bluntly, "Yeah, of course you can go to the future." With this casual response, Kazu presents the revelation as less extraordinary than it actually is.

The cafe in which the events of the novel occur takes its name from "Funiculì, Funiculà," a popular Neapolitan song composed by Luigi Denza in 1880.

When Kawaguchi writes, "The aroma of coffee drifted from the kitchen," he is using olfactory imagery to immerse the reader in Fumiko's perspective.

Although Fumiko has been told that nothing she does in the past can affect her present, she travels back in time hoping she can somehow repair her relationship with Goro, despite the apparent futility.