Review ‘Cold Enough For Snow’ Novella by Jessica Au
A gently flowing story of the tenuous relationship between an adult daughter, the narrator, and her ageing mother during a tourist trip to Japan. The memories, flashbacks and every day minutia come from the daughter. At times the dialogue between the two is fragile, hesitant, and the occasional polite conversation is a description of scenery or food, never their emotions, never connecting on a personal level, but still caring. The daughter remembers her studies and her then boyfriend Laurie. I thought it was surreal when she went kayaking with Laurie and crossed an ancient meteor crater full of deep dark water. Not something I could do but this is not an adventure book, it exposes us to thoughts.
Our memories shift and bend. The grey bookcover perhaps represents the hazy way we walk through life and remember. There’s a mystifying love birds recollection and the daughter even imagines clearing out her mother’s flat, sorting through a lifetime of possessions. Not for gain, just practical, like planning to visit Japan and her mother asking if it was “cold enough for snow”. The story, like the gentle and seemingly never-ending raindrops, carried me through galleries, museums, shopping, rural landscapes and train stations where gifts are carefully chosen for the family. There comes thoughtful gestures from the daughter, always aware of her mother’s pace, watching if she tires, suggesting places to visit and taking care of their meals and travel plans. I enjoyed the calm, methodical pace of this story.
I think you can have memories to talk about, worry about, analyse or just carry close. A meaningful picture of this quiet couple is compiled in my mind without any great realisation on my part until towards the end of the book. “It had been cold outside and warm in the train.” and I felt subtext; is the daughter really with her mother on this journey? Or is she remembering it? Seemingly disconnected, everything does connect to make the daughter an interesting character. Snippets like her restaurant work and her student days were easily imagined. I loved the couple of pages describing her time in Hong Kong and her reluctance to tell her future husband Laurie that she had once lived there.
Wearing puffer jackets, reliving old memories and making new ones, the mother and daughter’s last stopping point is to Inari gates Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto. (The Inari shrine complex is comprised of worship halls at the base of the mountain connected via astounding vermilion torii gate-lined paths). Situated in the mountains, this walk shows their stamina and unspoken mother/daughter bond, each perhaps recalling what they had seen and experienced together. At the end of this novella, the thought conveyed to me is that their journey is not quite over yet.
❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2024
Thoughts Become Words 