When we left the hotel it was raining, a light, fine rain, as can sometimes happen in Tokyo in October.
Cold Enough for Snow by Melbourne based author, Jessica Au, was the inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, a new biennial award established by Giramondo Publishing (Australia), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (USA). The novella will be published in February 2022 and translated into fourteen languages. Au’s first novel Cargo (2011) was published by Picador and was highly commended in the Kathleen Mitchell Award for a writer under 30.
Normally, I hold off reviewing an ARC until the month of publication, but this was too delicious and too apt not to write up straight away. Apt thanks to AusReading Month and Novellas in November and it’s deliciousness is something I am very happy to tease you with until you can read it for yourself in February.
I cannot yet share any of the gentle phrases, lovely descriptions or rambling walks that Au takes us on with her narrator and her mother, but I can share the publishers blurb.
A young woman accompanies her mother on a holiday in Japan. The daughter has arranged their itinerary. 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 allegiances in Australia.
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.
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute with this slim yet compelling story. It would have been easy to gulp this down in one sitting, but I wanted to savour it, spreading it out over several reading sessions instead. I enjoyed all the flashbacks and I loved the time spent walking around Tokyo, playing tourist in art galleries, museums, churches and parks – remembering when we could do such things as well.
Needless to say, it ticked many of my favourite reading boxes.
The setting in Japan, the slightly off-kilter mother/daughter relationship, the childhood memories and the many discussions about life, it’s meaning and purpose all seemed perfectly designed to captivate me as a reader. Au’s writing meandered through time, encouraging the reader to linger over each section. It is only as the story draws to a close that we begin to wonder why we have learnt so little about the mother’s life.
Cold Enough For Snow is a gentle, thoughtful and philosophical novella. In fact, it is probably one of the most perfect novellas I have ever read. It had one central theme (the mother/daughter trip to Japan) and one viewpoint (the daughters). The emotional life of this mother/daughter relationship is explored via flashbacks, memories and present-day moments, building a complex, nuanced picture of their lives.
Robert Silverberg writes in the introduction to the novella anthology, Sailing to Byzantium (2000) that the novella
…is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms…it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.
Au has achieved all of that and more with Cold Enough For Snow. Pop this book into your diary for February 2022; you won’t want to miss out!
By the by, just between us, I think the Australian cover design by Jenny Grigg wins hands down!
- Added to #ReadIndies2022
- Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2023
- 2023 Dublin Literary Award Longlist
Title: Cold Enough For Snow Author: Jessica Au ISBN: 9781925818925 Imprint: Giramondo Publishing Published: 1st February 2022 Pages: 108 pages Format: Paperback
| This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are our first storytellers, and the traditional custodians of the lands, seas, and skies on which we live and work. |
This Reading Life 
This is not my kind of book, but I am delighted by the establishment of this prize, and I agree that novellas are a wonderful form of fiction.
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I’m very excited to see what comes out of the next Novel Prize, certainly the shortlist for this sounded interesting. I’d be keen to see Emily Hall’s The Longcut published too as I always enjoy a book that talks about the world of art.
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Me too!
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On to the wishlist it goes! Sounds wonderful. Although I think I might have guessed the “trick” of this one…
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Not so much a trick but a pentimento Kim. A book I will definitely reread.
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Sounds quite delicious so will do as you recommend and add to the wish,it’s though I’m not at all keen on the U.K. cover. So boring…..
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From what I could see on the Fitzcarraldo website, the blue cover is a signature design (they use the reverse of white with blue print for their essays). However the books do have French flaps (which I love), and they use their own font called Fitzcarraldo. They also publish Svetlana Alexievich and Olga Tokarczuk for the UK market, so that’s a good thing too.
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Oh I am definitely going to check this out – sounds wonderful!
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The mother/daughter dynamic always intrigues me, but it was the walking around Japan that really sucked me in. I miss travelling so much.
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Sounds great – I’ll look out for it! Totally agree about the covers – both the US and UK ones are pretty unappealing.
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New Directions often have stunning, even startling and unique covers for their books. It has been fascinating learning a little about each of these small publishers and how they got started. New Directions has been around since 1936 and historically focused on poetry.
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Totally agree with you about the covers, but the book does indeed sound wonderful and onto the list it’s gone.
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I hope you enjoy it as much as I did Jule.
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This sounds exactly like a book for me. Japan, mother-daughter, novella, elegiac … I will have to fit this one in. (I refuse to review ARC’s as you clearly prefer not to because I must be able to share quotes! I want to hear the sound of this one too!)
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That was the hardest part about deciding to write this post now – not being able to share any of the beautiful passages that I had underlined & marked. Maybe I’ll repost in Feb with quotes added ☺️
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I reckon you could do a Delicious Descriptions or Sensational Snippets post like Lisa and I sometimes do.
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Perfect! Thanks 🙏🏽
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PS I haven’t read the book yet, obviously, but the Aussie cover is way more beautiful.
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What an interesting book – the Japanese setting intrigues me.
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That was a big part of its appeal for me too – the visits to bath houses, private tea ceremonies, travelling on the trains, walking Shibuya Crossing – brought back lots of wonderful memories.
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When I’ve seen other readers post photos of all their Fitzcarraldo books on a shelf, they look lovely. But, I agree, side-by-side, like in your photo, the Australian cover is gorgeous.
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I agree, and on the webpage the Fitzcarraldo’s look great side by side. The uniformity in design is pleasing to the eye. But in this comparison, the Australian design works best I think, and evokes much of the mood of the book far better.
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That’s a significant investment, translation into/publishing in 14 languages. They must be very confident of it doing well. I’m not sure I’ll remember all the way to February, so yes you’d better post some quotes then.
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I would actually like to reread this, so Feb it is!
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Too Cold For Snow sounds like an intriguing read. Mother/daughter relationships are always interesting to read about.
I have read a few reviews on novellas this last month. I seldon get hold of short novels like this, but they seem to have some very interesting stories. Have to keep my eyes more open.
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I have another couple of my sleeve, but am concerned I will out of time to review and post them in November. I guess I will just have to be early for next year’s Novellas in November 🙂
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I can’t wait for this to be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions! Thank you for your contributions to Novellas in November.
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Sounds right up my (Tokyo) alley…
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I remember hearing about this prize when it was first announced, and I was intrigued to see what would win – it sounds fascinating.
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It was an impressive start for the new prize. I will be very keen to see what they unearth with the 2022 entrants.
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