Small café in Tokyo, the Funiculi Funicala has the particularity of being haunted by the ghost of a lady in white alone at her table. When the latter gets up to go to the bathroom, you can take her place and travel to the past or the future. However, there are a few rules to follow, the most important being to drink your coffee until the last drop before it gets cold.
We must also accept that this journey through time has no bearing on the present: “Fumiko needed a convincing explanation for this implausible rule according to which” whatever effort you make in going back to the past, that will not change. not reality ”. But Kazu had only said: “Because it’s the rule.” “
What is the use of rehashing the past or glimpsing what the future holds in store for us? What if this short temporal escapade allowed the intrepid hiker to get to know himself better, to better understand his situation, to be able to let go? This is the premise as charming as it is improbable on which rests As long as the coffee is still hot, the first novel by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, playwright born in Osaka in 1971. This novel, released in Japan in 2015, where it has sold more than a million copies, and translated in more than thirty countries, is moreover, the adaptation of his play which won him the grand prize at the Suginami Drama Festival.
The theatrical origins of the novel can be guessed by the unity of place and the small number of characters – it is always the same customers that we find at the Funiculi Funicula. In addition, the author gives pride of place to the dialogues rather than the reflections of the characters, and his summary descriptions of the café and the characters resemble step-by-step instructions. “Fumiko was the archetype of the beautiful and intelligent woman. But she wasn’t necessarily aware of it. “
Touching and less light than it immediately appears, As long as the coffee is still hot brings together in a welcoming, albeit exotic, closed-door, where “only a clock would have made it possible to distinguish day from night in this place constantly tinged with a sepia color”, eccentrics, loners and not very talkative beings that Toshikazu Kawaguchi manages to make them endearing without revealing them too much.
Short and funny encounters are followed by touching one-on-one meetings where the characters drop the mask and reveal their vulnerability. Take the place of the lady in white, a lover reliving the moment her boyfriend left her, a woman discussing with her husband before Alzheimer’s had made their conversations impossible, an older sister speaking one last time to her. late youngest and a mother addressing her future child.
It is in these moments, when the characters display all their complexity, where the novelist casually delivers a reflection on the importance of the present moment, that the novel takes on its full scope and justifies its reading.