Cold Enough For Snow

Gabi's Review

Short and intensely nostalgic Jessica Au explorers the cross cultural and generational divide that separates migrants and the experiences of their children. Written in a stream of consciousness format that takes place on a holiday in Japan with a mother and her daughter. Full of beautiful imagery the protagonist examines and awakens the revelations of the ties that bind us to family and those we break away from. Novel Prize winner of 2022, this beautiful book will have enduring appeal.

Publisher's Review

 A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafés and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken? Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them.