The nostalgia in this book is incredibly palpable. Au's take on mother/daughter relationships and how our brains struggle to process our parents age with us is beautiful and only a little bit sad. Reading this made me miss my mom, even though we were in the same room.
— Rayna
A mother and daughter take a trip to Japan. They spend time together, in a way that they haven't in a long time, as memories start to swirl around them. Au, in effortlessly clear and crystalline sentences, explores the quiet gaps between people and even quieter attempts at connection. This is a book you fall into without even realizing, built on heavy melancholy and pure elegance. I wish everything I read was this perfect.
— David GA 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.