REVIEW #11: BEFORE YOUR MEMORY FADES by TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI

Before Your Memory Fades
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Picador 2022

THE JOURNEYS TO THE PAST CONTINUE

Once again, Kawaguchi’s novella reminds us of the importance of community and the way that public spaces ─ like cafes ─ can provide an focal point for people to come together and support each other. Relationships are central to his characters, just as they were in Before the Coffee Gets Cold. However, I felt that there was a greater emphasis on the propensity of human beings to misread the thoughts and feelings of others. Most of the characters who travel back in time discover misconceptions concerning what motivated the actions of those they love. Some discover they have created a negative narrative out of their past which has coloured all their experiences and that consuming bitterness was all based upon ignorance.

Whilst there is still a lot of repetition of the rules of travelling back to the past and the coming and going of each time traveller, they seemed more peripheral to the true concerns of the characters and the working out of their grief at the loss of someone they love. Woven through the whole story are the questions posed by Sachi from her book, One Hundred Questions. Although these are also repeated, they are worth repeating, as the reader becomes engaged in contemplating them and the consequences of our reasoning and choices. They are ‘What if…’ questions with alternative answers. Here is a sample. Question 87: You have a child who has just turned 10 years old. If the world were to end tomorrow, which would you do?
1. Keep quiet about it because they wouldn’t properly understand.
2. Tell the truth because you will feel guilty keeping quiet.
Helpfully, these questions are always posed when there are a few people gathered together in the café, so different characters can express their perspectives. These types of questions are a powerful way of focusing our attention on what is truly important. (Teachers will recognize these questions as an ideal way of stimulating creative thinking which is the highest order of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy.)

Of course, we don’t always have all the information we need. We are not always honest with each other about what we think or feel. We make decisions based on misconceptions. We attribute thoughts and feelings to others that bear no resemblance to reality. True to his culture, Kawaguchi is warning us, ever so politely, to be more open and honest in our conversations. To resist the temptation to make assumptions about the way people feel, or what they think, or the past experiences that have shaped them. Cleverly, Kawaguchi uses the fictional ‘Afterword’ of Sachi’s book, One Hundred Questions, to complete his novel. It seems to summarize his mission statement as a writer. I don’t think it will come as a surprise. It provided a fitting end to this book. I leave it to you to discover, if you decide to read it.