"Her face had changed since the times I had seen her last. She had always been youthful, so much so that I realised this was tied very closely to my image of her. Yet during the trip, I would look at her profile, her face when it was tired or resting, and realise that she was now a grandmother. Then, just as quickly, I would forget this again, seeing only the same image of her as I had throughout my childhood, which was strangely fixed, only to have this broken again some days later."

This novel was the inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, which is a new, biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world. As well as a cash prize the winner gets simultaneous publication in the UK and Ireland by the London-based Fitzcarraldo Editions, in Australia and New Zealand by Sydney publisher Giramondo, and in North America by New York’s New Directions. The prize rewards novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style.

Strictly though I think this is best seen as a novella – the actual text being only 86 pages

The story (at least on surface value) is of a woman (from an unnamed English speaking country (which fairly clearly seems to be Australia) who takes a holiday with her mother – her mother having been born in a rural Chinese village but then grown up in Hong Kong before moving to the English speaking country with her young family (including the narrator’s sister). The trip is the first time the mother and daughter have seen each other for some time, and the narrator has planned an artistically inclined itinerary around Tokyo (then Osaka and Kyoto).

Their trip together and the narrator’s descriptions of some of the art she sees provides the setting for a range of recollections from the narrator – sometimes from her own life, sometimes from family stories she remembers, sometimes from stories she is recounting second hand from her sister with a very Cuskian style (for example “She had not expected, she said”).

The reader is also aware of a certain ambiguity in the narrative – something just slightly off kilter. The mother figure is only seen through the eyes and thoughts of the narrator, her speech only rendered indirectly, but while that is part of the style in which the book is written, a further distancing of the mother from direct reality seems to lurk at the fringes of the text together with some passages which seem to already refer to events involving clearing the mother’s flat or others (such as my opening quote) when the mother’s appearance seems indeterminate and her physical existence almost ephemeral.

One begins to question if the narrative we are being told really did happen (for example was the narrator really on her own for the trip and thinking of her mother) or even if it did happen if it is being rewritten and reimagined some time in the future (perhaps after the mother’s death). This would fit some of the family stories told in the text – where the narrator’s recollection of them seem different to the memories of others, to some of the main themes in the art that the two (or one) view, as well as the narrator’s attempts to relate visual art to her own writing.

"As we walked, she asked me about my work. I didn’t answer at first, and then I said that in many of the old paintings, one could discover what was called a pentimento, an earlier layer of something that the artist had chosen to paint over. ….I said that in this way too, writing was just like painting. It was only in this way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it. I said, for this reason, it was better for her not to trust anything she read."

Stylistically the book seems to me to borrow heavily from early Ishiguro – with its careful constraint and elegance, as well as explicit consideration of restrained Japanese style art and pottery. A crucial part of the book appears to be when the narrator reflects on her job working as a waitress in a top end restaurant reaching for much the same mood and style as the novel – and I was intrigued then (given my early Ishiguro comparisons) to read:

"Inside, everything was done with a certain formality, a certain sense of weight and precision, as if to create a floating world."

If I had a criticism of the book it would be that the novella is a little too slight for my tastes. Firstly I do not in general terms really appreciate the minimalist aesthetic that the narrator clearly enjoys and which the novella seems based around. Secondly I think if a book is to be effective at this length then it needs to have the superfluous material chiseled away Michelangelo style – and yet I felt here there was some unnecessary detail (for example in some of the art sections) – I would contrast the book with Natasha Brown’s brilliant “Assembly” where she has said that she wrote around a sentence a day and considered every word for its importance and impact.

Overall though I found this an enjoyable and worthwhile read.

I received an advance copy of, Cold Enough for Snow, by Jessica Au. I did not get this book at all. It was story after story, and then a weird ending.

As we walked, she asked me about my work. I didn’t answer at first, and then I said that in many of the old paintings, one could discover what was called a pentimento, an earlier layer of something that the artist had chosen to paint over. Sometimes, these were as small as an object, or a colour that had been changed, but other times, they could be as significant as a whole figure, an animal, or a piece of furniture. I said that in this way too, writing was just like painting. It was only in this way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it. I said, for this reason, it was better for her not to trust anything she read.

Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow won the inaugural Novel Prize, run by Giramondo, New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions, and is a very worthy recipient of the award. It opens:

When we left the hotel it was raining, a light, fine rain, as can sometimes happen in Tokyo in October. I said that where we were going was not far–we would only need to get to the station, the same one that we had arrived at yesterday, and then catch two trains and walk a little down some small streets until we got to the museum.

The narrator of the novel is a young woman, on a trip to Japan with her mother, in October although whenever I’d asked her what she’d like to visit in Japan, she’d often said she would be happy with anything. The only question she’d asked once was whether, in winter, it was cold enough for snow, which she had never seen.

The narrative strand of the novel is relatively slight, the two women travelling to various museums and galleries in Tokyo, and then on to Osaka and Kyoto. But the true story comes from the anecdotes, memories and recounted conversations the narrator shares with her mother, and which lead her off into reflections of her own.

As the novel progresses, we learn a little of the family back story. The narrator's mother was born in a rural village but moved to Hong Kong, where the narrator was born. But when the narrator was young the family moved to an English speaking country (I assumed Australia, although not named) and the narrator grew up with English as her primary language.

The prose is beautifully polished and the effect (perhaps significantly) elegiac

Earlier, he had pointed out the wild orchids growing in the cracks in the rocks, and I noticed in him, as with Laurie, the ability to pick out the small details of the world, or to see things that others might miss. It was, I suspected, something he did unconsciously, or automatically, not realising how it would return later in the sculptures he made, or the things he said. But then again, perhaps he did know, and cultivated it, as one nurtured a new plant.

And, in a relatively non-linear series of recollections, there are several recurrent motifs, including East Asian porcelain, at first much coveted in the West but later imitated, clothes (typically elegant but understated) as a literal or metaphorical uniform, and the contemplation of art. As our narrator remarks: I felt that if only I could connect these things better, then I might truly have come to realise something.

There are flavour here of the ambiguous prose of one of Gabriel Josipovici’s narrators, told in the indirect fashion of Rachel Cusk’s Faye and the restrained prose of Kazuo Ishiguro, whose Never Lewt Me Go the author once singled out as her favourite novel; commenting “The way he uses narrative structure, with those drips of detail and memory, completely floored me the first time I read it. Even the title, which, when you think about it, holds such beautiful sadness – it’s a command for something that can never really be done.”

But Jessica Au carves out something quite beautiful and unique. And kudos (Cuskian pun intended) to the publishers behind the prize for awarding it to a perfectly formed brief novel rather than the tomes that seem to grab most literary attention.

4.5 stars

Au’s book was a very easy read. It reminds me of Nina Mingya Powles’ writing. Essentially like a ‘slice of life’ anime. I prefer Powles’ writing. Perhaps because I just don’t enjoy reading stories about ordinary relationships of ordinary couples doing ordinary things (which takes up about a third of Au’s book). It may be ‘cute’ in real-life (or appeal to someone else better), but I don’t see the point of it being written and published in a book. Powles’ writes about food better while Au concentrates more on the narrator’s ‘thoughts’ – which can oft seem quite self-indulgent especially when she shares her ‘life lessons’/ philosophy to the readers. Another thing that made it difficult for me to enjoy the book more is the narrator’s ignorance/lack of knowledge with regards to ‘art’. Again, this ‘characteristic’ may seem ‘cute’ to another/different reader, but personally – it just didn’t work for me. Although I may sound a bit harsh in my review, I do think I enjoyed the book (overall), but I certainly can’t promise that I’ll remember much of it in the next few days.

A lot like a travel journal/diary. Not something I would usually pick up (but very thankful for the advanced review copy – more please; I love you dearly, Fitzcarraldo Editions), but I miss Japan so I felt compelled to read it. The landscapes recorded in the book felt familiar to me but written a bit too plainly and dull for my liking. Perhaps that is because I am comparing them to my own personal experiences. I’m a bit of an ‘eccentric’ traveller/tourist so it’s a bit unfair for me to compare.

"I said that in this way too, writing was just like painting. It was only in this way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it. I said, for this reason, it was better for her not to trust anything she read."

Seemingly simple on the surface, this becomes an increasingly slippery text where as the reader I was questioning the status of what I was reading. We're in the head of the narrator who recounts a journey with her mother in Japan - but as all the speech is indirect and we never actually hear the mother speak, there are possibilities that she is no more than a freighted figure imagined by her daughter. Especially telling (and puzzling) is a scene where the two women stay at a small hotel and when the daughter asks where her mother is, the staff say only she checked in alone...

The writing is interior and controlled with a kind of hypnotic rhythm to it, and the early travelogue with visits to Japanese art galleries becomes increasingly interrupted by the narrator's memories of the past, and of her family. The atmosphere is enigmatic and slightly melancholy or elegiac and the end when it comes is abrupt and unsettling.

More novella that full novel, this is mysterious and richer than it first appears. Short but not at all straightforward, this is one of those pieces of writing where I finished it and immediately wanted to reread it.

Cold Enough for Snow is a beautifully-observed, deceptively simple piece, brief but dense, pared down yet at the same time rich and intricate. On the surface it’s a straightforward story told in the first person by a daughter reflecting on her relationship with her mother, one that’s both frustratingly distanced and unavoidably intimate. They meet up in Japan for a holiday, spend time walking through quiet streets, visiting art galleries and shrines. Their conversations are curiously one-sided dominated by the daughter’s eagerness to share her insights with her mother about everything they encounter, in an almost-teacherly manner. As their time together passes, memories of the past start to unfold in the narrator’s mind. Gradually their life stories are uncovered, the mother’s birth in a small village – presumably in mainland China – and her childhood and youth in Hong Kong, the daughter’s slow parting with her family, her new life stirred by desires opened up by study and by experiences that are vastly removed from those of her mother’s. A mother who left Hong Kong for a country where she could no longer speak in her original Cantonese, close to her children but separated by the gulf created by their different languages and cultural settings.

It’s an enigmatic novel, with an underlying air of melancholy, that sometimes has the feel of a tone poem, with elements in the text suggesting that circumstances may be other than they appear. At one point the narrator talks to her mother about pentimento, the way in which a finished painting may hold hidden traces of earlier versions, a figure or a form obscured, something small perhaps or something significant enough to change its entire meaning. Writing the narrator says can be the same way, a glossing over or a reworking to transform reality into what we wished it might have been, and for that reason it’s not to be trusted. One wish that seems significant here is the daughter’s longing to overcome a sense of dislocation, the splitting that occurs between generations when a parent’s an immigrant, uprooted and cut off from their history. It’s also a highly visual piece, numerous vivid, detailed references are made to art, nature, the scenery and sounds of Japan. In this way Jessica Au foregrounds the act of seeing, sometimes this works as metaphor but at others it’s more about immediacy and the whole process of being in the world.

I found myself totally immersed in Au’s writing, her prose is nuanced, fluid and sensitive, admirably disciplined, offering up a meticulously constructed representation of two lives in miniature - at a little over ninety pages this is closer in scale to a novella than a full-fledged novel. Au, a Chinese Australian writer who’s worked as a bookseller, editor and journalist, won the inaugural Novel Prize with this, her second book, and as part of that Cold Enough for Snow will be published simultaneously in the U.K. by Fitzcarraldo Editions, in the U.S. by New Directions and in Australia by Giramondo, as well as made available in translation in a range of territories, and on the strength of this she more than deserves the recognition that this should bring.
Rating: 4.5