Before Your Memory Fades

The rules of the café have not changed. The visit is brief, the seat is particular, and nothing that happened can be undone by going back to it. The third book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi's sequence gives four more people the chance to sit down in the past: a daughter who never said goodbye, a comedian parted from a friend, a sister whom guilt has never released, and a young man seeking a first meeting. Each story is quiet and self-contained, and the consolation on offer has more to do with the present than with anything that can be altered behind them. What comes with this edition: • Four linked stories, each following one visitor to the café • Continues the Before the Coffee Gets Cold sequence • Gentle magical realism that does not require reading the series in order • Regret, closure and forgiveness handled without sentimentality For readers of gentle literary fiction and translated Japanese novels. Published by Pan MacMillan and available at Boipoka.