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Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au review – a graceful novella about how we pay attention
Easy conclusions elude in this slender story about a mother and daughter’s trip to Japan
In one scene in Cold Enough for Snow, the unnamed narrator explains to her mother why she likes Greek myths. They work like a camera obscura, she says, but for human nature: “By looking indirectly at the thing they wanted to focus on, they were sometimes able to see it even more clearly than with their own eyes.” What, exactly, our narrator might be focusing on animates this novella like a ghost.
Cold Enough for Snow is the second book from Melbourne writer Jessica Au. It won her the first Novel prize in 2020 and comes a decade after her acclaimed debut, Cargo. The plot is simple; “deceptively” so, as some reviews have noted: mother and adult daughter visit Japan, see the sights, take in art and food, go home. What we hear of their conversation is quotidian and understated, at frustrating odds with the narrator’s pressing hunger for connection. Memories swirl of interactions with others: her partner Laurie, with whom she’s considering a child; the lecturer who introduced her to “the classics”; an unsettling customer at the Chinese restaurant where she once worked.
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au is out now in Australia ($24.95, Giramondo), in US on 15 February (New Directions) and in the UK on 22 February (Fitzcarraldo).
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