A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here – is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey? At once a careful reckoning and an elegy, Cold Enough for Snow questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another’s inner world.
Selected from more than 1,500 entries, Cold Enough for Snow won the Novel Prize, a new, biennial award offered by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions (US) and Giramondo (Australia), for any novel written in English that explores and expands the possibilities of the form.
Review
‘Rarely have I been so moved, reading a book: I love the quiet beauty of Cold Enough for Snow and how, within its calm simplicity, Jessica Au camouflages incredible power.’
- Edouard Louis, author of The End of Eddy
‘Au’s writing ebbs along effortlessly and poetically.’
- The Australian
‘Jessica Au is a new talent to be watched.’
- Romy Ash, Australian Book Review
‘Cold Enough for Snow is a lush, fervent novel about art, class, longing and getting older, told through the lens of a mother-daughter relationship. Set against the cold, wet neon of autumn in Japan, Jessica Au’s novel is wracked with nuanced observations and painful tenderness as her protagonist digs her fingernails into the seams of the world, hungry for knowledge, only to realise there is so much for which we do not have words.’
- Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater
About the Author
Jessica Au is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. Cold Enough for Snow, her second novel, will be published by New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo, and is already set to be translated into twelve languages.
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