COLD ENOUGH FOR SNOW

Narrator Angela Lin channels the dreamlike elegance of Au's second novel, a meditation on mother-daughter relationships and the frailty of the remembered past. Au's deceptively simple story follows an unnamed woman and her Chinese mother as they travel through Japan, visiting art museums, temples, and inns on a trip that is filled with missed connections and lost opportunities. With the perfect amount of discernment and reserve, Lin depicts the interactions between mother and daughter, delicately revealing both women's helpless awkwardness. The mother's revelations about the meaning of life are met with almost palpable silence, and the daughter ponders but never addresses her mother's incongruent memories. Lin's narration, an exquisite accompaniment to this spare and unsettling story, honors the gravitas and precision of Au's prose. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2022]