Little of importance actually happens in ¡°Cold Enough for Snow,¡± in which a mother and her adult daughter vacation in Japan during the typhoon season. Through the daughter¡¯s narration, we follow the pair to museums, bookstores, restaurants and souvenir shops. Their largely one-sided conversations are interspersed with the narrator¡¯s recollections of various people in her life: her uncle in Hong Kong; her partner, Laurie; her sister; a university lecturer.
In the hands of a less talented writer, this subdued plot could have been stultifying. Fortunately, this isn¡¯t the case for Australian writer Jessica Au. Her second novel, ¡°Cold Enough for Snow,¡± is a slender volume, but this restraint is an excellent argument for more tightly-written novellas over bloated bestsellers.
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