Cold Enough for Snow is defined by its small scale, driven by the details of life in its absolute present moment. Au’s flashbacks are more concerned with the patterns on bowls, the texture of fabrics, or the light through a “canopy of leaves,” than the sequence of events. Her language comes from a different logic of attention: One that skims along the textures of life, floating from one association to another; she finds connections not in historical causation, but in the way walking home after a swim recalls the same feeling as looking at Impressionist paintings. And if the narrator doesn’t succeed in bonding with her mother, Au succeeds in connecting to the reader with her subtle language and elegant way of looking.

A powerful novel about the relationship between a mother and daughter, and the ways that geography, language, art, travel and migration can change the ways we see ourselves….a hazy, dream-like mirage, in which characters, emotions and intentions are ever-so-slightly out of reach.

Au’s calm, unrelenting focus would be hard to take over a longer book – but this novella is graceful and precise. Like the narrator fine-tuning the aperture on her Nikon camera, Au seems to say, we have to choose our scale, what we pay attention to.

Au’s novel is perhaps most masterly in the way it evokes our dissociation from desire—our own and other people’s…we can sense it in the soft, patient warmth of Au’s prose, which sometimes feels attuned to truths just out of the narrator’s reach.

Au’s novel is perhaps most masterly in the way it evokes our dissociation from desire—our own and other people’s…we can sense it in the soft, patient warmth of Au’s prose, which sometimes feels attuned to truths just out of the narrator’s reach.

Jessica Au’s slim, spectral novel Cold Enough for Snow…deftly uses stream of consciousness to explore the legacy of inherited family traits and the difficulty of breaking away.

Quiet and crisp like a clear winter morning…a world of melancholy and dissolving identity.

Au’s is a book of deceptive simplicity, weaving profound questions of identity and ontology into the fabric of quotidian banality….What matters, the novel reassures us, is constantly imbricated with the everyday, just as alienation and tender care can coexist in the same moment.

On a trip to Japan, a mother and daughter circle each other quietly. There is no tension, no snap, but every exchange — about souvenirs and restaurant menus and their childhood memories — is laden with pressure, a potential missed opportunity for bonding…Cold Enough for Snow observes the invisible thread between parent and child as it twists and knots and occasionally goes slack.

Flawed understanding, consolation, and insufficiency all infuse this compelling, unsettling novel reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts or Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy. A beautifully observed book, written in precise, elegant prose that contains a wealth of deep feeling.

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.

Jessica Au is a new talent to be watched.

Au’s writing ebbs along effortlessly and poetically.