Kawaguchi capitalizes on the inherent emotional power of certain types of relationships (new love, old love, siblings, parents and children) to give his story weight in the absence of compelling style or plot. I like stories about loss and I really wanted to like this but the formulaic encounters were literally each the same: person travels in time to speak to a loved one, gets there and doesn’t quite know what to say, suddenly as the coffee is about to cool the loved one breaks the awkwardness by confessing something emotional and healing, and then the time traveler returns to the present with a new perspective on an unchangeable situation. It was cute once but after the fourth time I was totally checked out. 

Except for two really good moments I resented the times this book made me emotional because it felt manipulative rather than earned. I also found the stilted writing and clumsy dialogue extremely irritating, though I am chalking that up to poor translation by Trousselot. I wish publishers would stop getting white guys to translate Japanese literature.