It might be good, she suggests at one point, “to stop sometimes and reflect upon the things that have happened, maybe thinking about sadness can actually end up making you happy.” Hint, hint, Mom.īuried secrets and repressed memories are common storytelling devices, the supposed treasures that many atmospheric novels of consciousness use to entice readers. But, other than a vague impression of “poverty and family and war,” the daughter knows little about this past. Or maybe it will be found in the mother’s past-her emigration from Hong Kong many years earlier and the family she left behind there. The joint vacation came about, the daughter says, because she “was beginning to feel that it was important,” for reasons that she “could not yet name.” Maybe the answer lies in the pointed absence of the narrator’s father, who is never mentioned. But it’s hard for the characters-much less the reader-to say what that something might be. We never find out where either character is travelling from, or much about the lives that await them upon return.įrom the start, there are signs that mother and daughter are dancing around something. Along the way, she shares a few memories: of a creepy patron at the Chinese restaurant where she worked as a waitress of the otherworldly allure of a beloved college professor’s house of her first visit to the home where her husband grew up. The daughter narrates in calm prose that evokes the sound of a rake carefully tracing a pattern in sand. This is just about all the surface action in “ Cold Enough for Snow,” the slim and sly second novel by the Australian author Jessica Au. They take walks, ride trains, visit art galleries, eat in restaurants, and shop for gifts.
A mother and daughter meet in Japan for vacation.
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