“An Yu’s Ghost Music is a novel haunted in every way-psychologically, philosophically, and literally. An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound.”- Claire Kohda, Guardian However, these themes are explored in such an unusual way that it doesn’t read like a domestic novel throughout there is the uncanny sense of something odd, verging on supernatural, going on in the background. “The story at the centre of Ghost Music revolves around the struggles of living with an elderly inlaw, the collapse of a marriage, and more generally the pressures on women to be doting wives in Chinese society. Like these skillful portraitists of alienation, Yu conjures a visceral inbetweenness where the worlds of matter and spirit meet in a shared, suspended space.”- Alexandra Kleeman, New York Times Book Review There’s something here of early Murakami’s graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny, as well as the vivid yet muted emotionality of Patrick Modiano or Katie Kitamura.
Yu braids the mundane and the magical together with a gentle hand.
With its quiet, dreamy bending of reality and its precise depiction of many different strains of alienation, Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully-and the potential consequences of failing to do so. Summoned to an uncanny, seemingly ageless house hidden in a hutong that sits in the middle of the congested city, she finds Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.Ī gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery, Ghost Music animates contemporary Beijing through the eyes of a lonely yet hopeful young woman and gives vivid color and texture to the promise of new beginnings.Ī New York Times Book Review Editors’ Pick When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. When a parcel of mushrooms native to her mother-in-law’s province is delivered seemingly by mistake, Song Yan sees an opportunity to bond with her, and as the packages continue to arrive every week, the women stir-fry and grill the mushrooms, adding them to soups and noodles. As tension in the household rises, it becomes harder for Song Yan to keep her usual placid demeanor, especially since she is troubled by dreams of a doorless room she can’t escape, populated only by a strange orange mushroom. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. She gave up on her own career as a concert pianist many years ago, but her husband Bowen, an executive at a car company, has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child.
For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students.
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