Cold Enough for Snow

De: Jessica Au

Narrado por: Gaby Seow

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.

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?

2022, The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction, Short-listed

2022, Queensland Literary Awards The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, Short-listed

2023, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Victorian Prize for Literature, Winner

2023, Indie Book Awards Fiction, Long-listed

2023, Dublin Literary Award, Long-listed

2023, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Fiction, Winner

2023, Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Small Publishers' Adult, Short-listed

2023, ALS Gold Medal, Long-listed

2023, Miles Franklin Literary Award, Short-listed

2023, Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Winner

2023, Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal, Long-listed

©2022 Jessica Au. First published in print by Giramondo Publishing Company, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and New Directions Publishing (P)2022 Bolinda Publishing

Reseñas de la Crítica

"So calm and clear and deep, I wished it would flow on forever." (Helen Garner)

"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)

Beautiful and meditative

Not the sort of thing I would normally read but I loved it. More of a painting than a novel, focusing on atmosphere and memory rather than plot.

Soft, moving

Slow and moving story.
Unfortunately - and unusually for Bolinda - the read is not v good. often words mispronounced, (emphasis on syllables); a character’s name often pronounced slightly differently and the pace is not really varied or changing. It was so monotonous and lacking in nuance that I thought it was computer-read… it is hard to think that a Director /Producer listened to this final production and thought it was good enough to release.