Only Connect

For my 'Novella in November', I chose Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow (2022), a book I have been longing to read. It won the 2020 Novel Prize, the 2023 Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. With all the accolades, I had high expectations for this book, but unfortunately it left me cold.

The story involves a woman who arranges to meet her mother in Tokyo and travel around Japan together.  Narrated by the daughter, she describes their visits to art galleries, restaurants, temples and stores. The two are estranged and while they are travelling together, they share little - even at an art gallery they view the works separately. For the daughter, this trip is a chance to escape her daily life and contemplate her future. Through flashbacks we learn about the narrator's sister, an uncle in Hong Kong, her partner Laurie - but we learn little of the mother and daughter. In an effort to please each other, neither says what is on their mind. Can they bridge the distance between them?

Jessica Au writes in a beautifully observant sensory style. She describes places and things meticulously. The way our narrator describes what she sees is evocative, contemplative and delightful. For example, 

'When my mother finally appeared, she might as well have been an apparition. She came with her puffer jacket zipped up to her chin, and in the cold night air her breath came out in a little cloud, like a small departing spirit' (p. 90).

I loved Au's descriptive prose, admiring each sentence. The author forces you to slow down, savour every word.  However the overall stream-of-consciousness style without chapter breaks did not work for me. I wanted more from this book, to gain a better understanding of the characters, to feel more substance. Not unlike the narrator, I longed for connection.