As soon as I finished Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, I started reading it again. The book is a short one, more a novella than a novel. On the surface, it reads like an extended report on a travel experience rather than a story with dramatic twists and turns. Yet its essence is the relationship between an adult daughter and her mother.
Although their country of residence is never named, it is probably Australia, a country to which the mother migrated from China and in which she raised two daughters. The daughter narrates the story in first person. She is eager to show her mother the county she and her husband found so enchanting during a recent visit. The novel describes in poetic detail what the daughter experiences during the trip as well as her observations and memories of her mother who appears to respond quite differently from her to the places and objects they encounter in Japan.
As they travel, the daughter’s understanding of her mother changes slowly. The change comes from thinking about stories of her mother’s family and childhood, talking on the phone to her sister, and remembering incidents in her own life: when she was a student, worked in a restaurant, met the man she would marry, and settled into a new house with her husband. The daughter’s self-knowledge grows along with her appreciation of her mother and her pleasure in their changing relationship.
Cold Enough for Snow is more than an inner journey through travel in a new land. It is distinctive in the way the story is told. Jessica Au’s leisurely descriptions of places and objects are strongly tactile and visual, especially in their depiction of texture and colour, written with an artist’s sensibility. Reading this book sharpened my perceptions about everyday scenes, works of art and even household items.
If you are seeking the quiet pleasure of a book to help you slow down and appreciate your family and surroundings, Cold Enough for Snow will do that for you. But don’t read it fast. This is one to savour.
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Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Fitzcaraldo Editions, 2022, 104 pages
ISBD: 978-1-913097-76-9
Winner of the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award