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Ghost Music
For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. 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. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. 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.
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. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. 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.
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. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. 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.
226 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2022
196 people are currently reading
18520 people want to read
About the author
An Yu
10 books256 followersAn Yu (安於) was born and raised in Beijing, and spent parts of her life studying and working in London, New York, and Paris. She received her MFA from New York University and writes her fiction in English. She is the author of the novels Braised Pork (2020), Ghost Music (2022), and Sunbirth (2025). Her writing has also appeared in The Sunday Times Style, Freeman’s, Literary Hub, The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
She currently lives in Hong Kong and teaches creative writing at City University Hong Kong.
She currently lives in Hong Kong and teaches creative writing at City University Hong Kong.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,037 reviews
November 18, 2025
surprised by just how much this plot revolves around mushrooms
(review to come / reading for a substack post)
(review to come / reading for a substack post)
December 18, 2022
I love the unsettling, uncanny atmosphere of this wonderfully disturbing feminist novel about grief: Song Yan is haunted by her past dream of becoming a concert painist, which she traded for becoming a wife - music was her home, now she hopes her husband will be just that. But when her mother-in-law moves in, Song Yan gradually discovers that she never really knew her husband, that he carries traumas and secrets (including an ex-wife and a kid, while he refuses to have a child with Song Yan). While the marriage becomes more and more precarious, Song Yan mysteriously receives a letter from her father's favorite concert pianist who was presumed death, and she starts to play again. And then there are the deliveries with different mushrooms that appear at her door, as well as a talking orange mushroom that manifests in her dreams...
While I struggled with her debut Braised Pork, I really enjoyed how An Yu amps up the weird in this deeply humane novel that relates each plot development to freaking fungi: They seduce the mother-in-law to spill secrets, they help Song Yan ponder her identity, and they suddenly grow in apartments, letting the line between reality and hallucination oscillate. There is a The Vegetarian feminist vibe involved, as Song Yan tries (and partly really wants to be) the traditional Chinese wife she is expected to evolve into, but the music at the core of her identity is a ghost she cannot shake, she cannot replace it as a partner in this symbiosis.
I was intrigued how complex the plot is crafted, how the imagery is open to different readings, and that Song Yan is not simply a victim of society, but a messy individual that often makes the reader wonder how intimately she knows (and can know) the inner workings of her soul, and that of the people around her. The enigmatic star painist that re-appears is searching for the sound of being alive, and composer and mushroom enthusiast John Cage is invoked, who famously knew about the sonic resonance of silence (see: John Cage: A Mycological Foray / Silence: Lectures and Writings). Alas, what can the silences of the characters in the novel reveal about their grief, about the absences and ghosts they wrestle with?
Interestingly, Icelandic artist Björk has recently released a "mushroom album" (her words), Fossora, which is, of course, great. The album also deals with grief, in this case the passing of her mother. Nevertheless, she explains that her "fungus period has been fun and bubbly" and stresses the connection to the soil and the unruly nature of wildly growing, various fungi - also an interesting foil to read An Yu's novel, and see the fungi as creative, resistant forces of hope.
An exciting novel, that should get some award recognition for its daring, weird nature and its sovereign refusal to neatly answer all questions it asks.
While I struggled with her debut Braised Pork, I really enjoyed how An Yu amps up the weird in this deeply humane novel that relates each plot development to freaking fungi: They seduce the mother-in-law to spill secrets, they help Song Yan ponder her identity, and they suddenly grow in apartments, letting the line between reality and hallucination oscillate. There is a The Vegetarian feminist vibe involved, as Song Yan tries (and partly really wants to be) the traditional Chinese wife she is expected to evolve into, but the music at the core of her identity is a ghost she cannot shake, she cannot replace it as a partner in this symbiosis.
I was intrigued how complex the plot is crafted, how the imagery is open to different readings, and that Song Yan is not simply a victim of society, but a messy individual that often makes the reader wonder how intimately she knows (and can know) the inner workings of her soul, and that of the people around her. The enigmatic star painist that re-appears is searching for the sound of being alive, and composer and mushroom enthusiast John Cage is invoked, who famously knew about the sonic resonance of silence (see: John Cage: A Mycological Foray / Silence: Lectures and Writings). Alas, what can the silences of the characters in the novel reveal about their grief, about the absences and ghosts they wrestle with?
Interestingly, Icelandic artist Björk has recently released a "mushroom album" (her words), Fossora, which is, of course, great. The album also deals with grief, in this case the passing of her mother. Nevertheless, she explains that her "fungus period has been fun and bubbly" and stresses the connection to the soil and the unruly nature of wildly growing, various fungi - also an interesting foil to read An Yu's novel, and see the fungi as creative, resistant forces of hope.
An exciting novel, that should get some award recognition for its daring, weird nature and its sovereign refusal to neatly answer all questions it asks.
June 13, 2022
The opening gripped me, the characters intrigued me, but the story just seemed to flop around and never amount to anything. I don't need a book to be grounded in a thesis or even a plot but I do need to have some assurance that the story isn't just drifting off as the wind blows, without an anchor. In the case of this novel, I didn't feel assured. Nothing concludes. Nothing feels essential. I enjoyed the drifty feeling but only to the extent that I enjoy eating air-popped popcorn sometimes, even if it is flavorless and has no reason to exist.
Read
March 16, 2023Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if I have good things to say. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book and then write a GR review about it would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.
*******************************************
I honestly did not quite know what I was getting into with this, but I ended feeling—appropriately enough—fainted haunted by it.
Ghost Music starts as a domestic piece. The heroine, Song Yan, has abandoned a music career to be a wife and, theoretically, a mother, except for the fact her husband, Bowen, seems resistant to start a family. Tensions only increase when Bowen’s mother moves in with them, as it quickly becomes clear she blames Song Yan for the lack of children. Song Yan, meanwhile, starts having dreams about a doorless room, where she talks to an orange mushroom. And then parcels of mushrooms start to arrive at the house, their sender finally revealed as Bai Yu, a pianist who vanished a decade ago.
This is an spare and eerie book, that feels in no rush to reveal itself to you. I’m not sure I’m, you know, literary enough to fully understand it but I’ve appreciated thinking about it. Its surface themes, I think, are relatively accessible: grief and survival, the unrecoverability of the past, hope for the future, marital breakdown, the struggles of living with an elderly relative, domestic and social pressures on Chinese women. There’s something about the ways these themes entwine—the way they’re so obliquely illuminated and yet feel so direct at the same time—that ended up being quite fascinating to me.
But then there’s also the … the … mushrooms? And the missing pianist? Magic realism doesn’t always work for me—mostly because I never quite know how to understand it—but it kind of did here. I think because the dreamlike quality of the book as a whole served to reflect both the dislocation of its heroine—a woman who is almost her own ghost—but also the nature of lives in general to accumulate ghosts: mistakes we have made, people and places we have lost, traumas we have tried to bury.
There’s a line early on where Song Yan reflects:
I felt this was a book that dwelled in its silences. It’s an oddly bold choice, and one I came to deeply admire. Ghost Music is a difficult work to talk about because it’s a little bit “all vibes” in terms of its delivery, just in that high concept lit ficcy way. That does not mean, however, it doesn’t also have quite specific things to say—about connection and self-sufficiency and the necessity of moving on—as Song Yan searches for freedom, for her voice, for a future that is not defined by others or haunted by them.
Ghost Music is the sort of the book that makes me wish I was a better and a better reviewer. I don’t know if I’ve done it justice here—if I’ve managed to communicate how intriguing and powerful it is—but it will certainly stay with me for a long time.
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if I have good things to say. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book and then write a GR review about it would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.
*******************************************
I honestly did not quite know what I was getting into with this, but I ended feeling—appropriately enough—fainted haunted by it.
Ghost Music starts as a domestic piece. The heroine, Song Yan, has abandoned a music career to be a wife and, theoretically, a mother, except for the fact her husband, Bowen, seems resistant to start a family. Tensions only increase when Bowen’s mother moves in with them, as it quickly becomes clear she blames Song Yan for the lack of children. Song Yan, meanwhile, starts having dreams about a doorless room, where she talks to an orange mushroom. And then parcels of mushrooms start to arrive at the house, their sender finally revealed as Bai Yu, a pianist who vanished a decade ago.
This is an spare and eerie book, that feels in no rush to reveal itself to you. I’m not sure I’m, you know, literary enough to fully understand it but I’ve appreciated thinking about it. Its surface themes, I think, are relatively accessible: grief and survival, the unrecoverability of the past, hope for the future, marital breakdown, the struggles of living with an elderly relative, domestic and social pressures on Chinese women. There’s something about the ways these themes entwine—the way they’re so obliquely illuminated and yet feel so direct at the same time—that ended up being quite fascinating to me.
But then there’s also the … the … mushrooms? And the missing pianist? Magic realism doesn’t always work for me—mostly because I never quite know how to understand it—but it kind of did here. I think because the dreamlike quality of the book as a whole served to reflect both the dislocation of its heroine—a woman who is almost her own ghost—but also the nature of lives in general to accumulate ghosts: mistakes we have made, people and places we have lost, traumas we have tried to bury.
There’s a line early on where Song Yan reflects:
“I’ve always been struck that silence in a room comes not immediately the music is over, but a few moments after the last note has finished reverberating.
I felt this was a book that dwelled in its silences. It’s an oddly bold choice, and one I came to deeply admire. Ghost Music is a difficult work to talk about because it’s a little bit “all vibes” in terms of its delivery, just in that high concept lit ficcy way. That does not mean, however, it doesn’t also have quite specific things to say—about connection and self-sufficiency and the necessity of moving on—as Song Yan searches for freedom, for her voice, for a future that is not defined by others or haunted by them.
Empathy is a liar. It seduces us with the impression of selflessness, yet whatever feelings we think we can fathom are confined by the extent of our own hearts. We are living on our own, in our separate bodies.
Ghost Music is the sort of the book that makes me wish I was a better and a better reviewer. I don’t know if I’ve done it justice here—if I’ve managed to communicate how intriguing and powerful it is—but it will certainly stay with me for a long time.
January 20, 2023
What happens when you lose your identity? When your job doesn't reflect who you are and when you get no connection anymore with friends nor family? This existentialist crisis is what the protagonist Song is facing. She is a young woman trying to find her own self in the middle of Beijing. Her slow breakdown starts when she receives a parcel with mushrooms that are not meant for her, but she can't return them as there is no sender information. This starts a series of events, some real and some in a dreamlike realm that will throw her off and send her in a full nervous breakdown after which she will reach a state of acceptance and even happiness.
In a strange way and despite the fact that Song lives in a culture that is extremely different of mine, I immediately felt connected to her and certainly in the parts where she describes her relation to her performing the piano. Never have I read about the immens fear one can have performing, not afraid of the public or the music, or the fear of tripping over some notes, but something much more feral. I have had that same fear as a young adult, and I did quit playing the piano because of it., and I never had the words to describe why that happened. Until now.
I absolutely loved the prose, beautiful but also very restrained and I was often reminded of some magic realism that I've read as a young adult, certainly the Flemish authors Johan Daisne and Hubert Lampo and also a bit of Isabel Allende. An absolute 5 star read, that I can truly recommend !
A heartfelt thanks to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In a strange way and despite the fact that Song lives in a culture that is extremely different of mine, I immediately felt connected to her and certainly in the parts where she describes her relation to her performing the piano. Never have I read about the immens fear one can have performing, not afraid of the public or the music, or the fear of tripping over some notes, but something much more feral. I have had that same fear as a young adult, and I did quit playing the piano because of it., and I never had the words to describe why that happened. Until now.
I absolutely loved the prose, beautiful but also very restrained and I was often reminded of some magic realism that I've read as a young adult, certainly the Flemish authors Johan Daisne and Hubert Lampo and also a bit of Isabel Allende. An absolute 5 star read, that I can truly recommend !
A heartfelt thanks to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
January 13, 2025
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Not having had the best experience with An Yu’s Braised Pork I was intrigued but wary of this second novel of hers. Similarly to Braised Pork, Ghost Music is a sparsely written surreal tale that manages to explore weird and existentialist avenues while also remaining tethered to the daily minutiae comprising the main character’s every-day life (preparing meals, eating, etc). The narrative is characterized by a murkiness that obfuscates our understanding of the events and experiences that are being recounted, the line between reality and dreams becomes increasingly blurry so we soon find ourselves struggling to differentiate between what is real and what is an illusion. I won’t lie and write that I understood what was going on in this book, because I did not. While reading Ghost Music my eyebrows were fixed in a perpetual perplexed frown. Yet, those elements and scenes that mystified and confused me were also the ones that intrigued me. Silences, ghosts (figurative and non), music, and pasts that haunt, are the motifs running throughout Ghost Music. The narrative’s juxtaposition between the bizarre and the mundane brought to mind David Lynch and the work of Hiroko Oyamada. The dreamy atmosphere, the off-beat, and sometimes absurd, character interactions, as well as the fantastical ‘ghost’ storyline, resulting in a unique reading experience that is guaranteed to confuse and confound you.
Our narrator is Song Yan, once a promising concert pianist, and now a piano tutor to young kids. She and her workaholic husband live together in a flat in Beijing. Bowen is remote, distracted, and quick to shut down any conversations about the possibility of children.
Bowen's widowed mother, who is from the province of Yunnan, later joins them. Soon after they begin receiving parcels of mushrooms native to Yunnan. Song Yan and her mother-in-law form a tentative bond by cooking these together. Tensions rise when Song Yan’s mother-in-law begins to blame her for her lack of children. Song Yan receives a letter that leads her to Bai Yu, a renowned pianist who disappeared years before, and here the story becomes even more fantastical. Song Yan also learns more about Bowen's past, and this widens the rift between them.
Another bizarre addition to Song Yan’s life is a recurrent dream involving a ghostly mushroom that may be trying to reveal something vital to her.
As I said before, I did not really understand a lot of what was happening (why it was happening, how it was happening, what it would lead to). Still, there was something about the dreamlike quality of Song Yan’s experiences that held my interest. I was both drawn to and weirded out by the bizarre elements and aspects of her story. While the narrative does tackle familiar themes such as grief, trauma, and memory, it does so in an unfamiliar, uncanny even, way. I was unsure of where Song Yan’s story would lead her, and that was part of the appeal to me. This uncertainty and not-knowing what was real or not, and the direction of her story. The tone retains this detachedness that makes it hard to come to know the characters, but again, this is what ultimately made them interesting to me. Bowen is a particularly frustrating character, especially in how cold he is towards Song Yan. Yet, I also felt a modicum of sympathy towards him, when we learn more about his past. Bowen's mother loses importance after the mid-way mark, which is a pity as I thought that the friction between her and Song Yan had potential. Still, I liked how Yu explored Song Yan's loneliness, her sadness, and her melancholy. I also appreciated the different types of silences depicted in her narrative and their effects (on a person's wellbeing, on a relationship, on someone's impression of another person).
The characters' opaqueness and obliqueness really fit with the surreal themes and imagery that are underlining Song Yan’s narrative. I will definitely give this a re-read and hopefully, that will enable me to understand wtf was going on more. Nevertheless, I was still able to like Ghost Music, in particular the contemplative nature and dreamlike quality of Song Yan's narration.
“Solitude is tolerable, even enjoyable at times. But when you realise that you’ve given your life to someone, yet you know nothing but his name? That kind of solitude is loneliness. That’s what kills you.”
Not having had the best experience with An Yu’s Braised Pork I was intrigued but wary of this second novel of hers. Similarly to Braised Pork, Ghost Music is a sparsely written surreal tale that manages to explore weird and existentialist avenues while also remaining tethered to the daily minutiae comprising the main character’s every-day life (preparing meals, eating, etc). The narrative is characterized by a murkiness that obfuscates our understanding of the events and experiences that are being recounted, the line between reality and dreams becomes increasingly blurry so we soon find ourselves struggling to differentiate between what is real and what is an illusion. I won’t lie and write that I understood what was going on in this book, because I did not. While reading Ghost Music my eyebrows were fixed in a perpetual perplexed frown. Yet, those elements and scenes that mystified and confused me were also the ones that intrigued me. Silences, ghosts (figurative and non), music, and pasts that haunt, are the motifs running throughout Ghost Music. The narrative’s juxtaposition between the bizarre and the mundane brought to mind David Lynch and the work of Hiroko Oyamada. The dreamy atmosphere, the off-beat, and sometimes absurd, character interactions, as well as the fantastical ‘ghost’ storyline, resulting in a unique reading experience that is guaranteed to confuse and confound you.
“Loss came in all shapes and forms, but it hadn’t occurred to me until now that you could lose the things you never had.”
Our narrator is Song Yan, once a promising concert pianist, and now a piano tutor to young kids. She and her workaholic husband live together in a flat in Beijing. Bowen is remote, distracted, and quick to shut down any conversations about the possibility of children.
Bowen's widowed mother, who is from the province of Yunnan, later joins them. Soon after they begin receiving parcels of mushrooms native to Yunnan. Song Yan and her mother-in-law form a tentative bond by cooking these together. Tensions rise when Song Yan’s mother-in-law begins to blame her for her lack of children. Song Yan receives a letter that leads her to Bai Yu, a renowned pianist who disappeared years before, and here the story becomes even more fantastical. Song Yan also learns more about Bowen's past, and this widens the rift between them.
Another bizarre addition to Song Yan’s life is a recurrent dream involving a ghostly mushroom that may be trying to reveal something vital to her.
“I’d always known that I was on my own, that I existed as a person separate from others, but to accept that fact—to walk a solitary path without fear—took a whole other kind of bravery.”
As I said before, I did not really understand a lot of what was happening (why it was happening, how it was happening, what it would lead to). Still, there was something about the dreamlike quality of Song Yan’s experiences that held my interest. I was both drawn to and weirded out by the bizarre elements and aspects of her story. While the narrative does tackle familiar themes such as grief, trauma, and memory, it does so in an unfamiliar, uncanny even, way. I was unsure of where Song Yan’s story would lead her, and that was part of the appeal to me. This uncertainty and not-knowing what was real or not, and the direction of her story. The tone retains this detachedness that makes it hard to come to know the characters, but again, this is what ultimately made them interesting to me. Bowen is a particularly frustrating character, especially in how cold he is towards Song Yan. Yet, I also felt a modicum of sympathy towards him, when we learn more about his past. Bowen's mother loses importance after the mid-way mark, which is a pity as I thought that the friction between her and Song Yan had potential. Still, I liked how Yu explored Song Yan's loneliness, her sadness, and her melancholy. I also appreciated the different types of silences depicted in her narrative and their effects (on a person's wellbeing, on a relationship, on someone's impression of another person).
The characters' opaqueness and obliqueness really fit with the surreal themes and imagery that are underlining Song Yan’s narrative. I will definitely give this a re-read and hopefully, that will enable me to understand wtf was going on more. Nevertheless, I was still able to like Ghost Music, in particular the contemplative nature and dreamlike quality of Song Yan's narration.
March 30, 2023
This must be one of the oddest books I have read.
Song Yan leads an unfulfilled life in her Beijing apartment; having given up her dream of becoming a concert pianist she gives piano lessons to young students, she wants a child but not her husband and her daily life is marked by the oppressive presence of her mother in law, who came to live with them from the Yunnan region. When she starts receiving mystery packages with mushrooms in them but have no known sender, she also starts dreaming and talking in her dreams to a strange orange mushroom.
A short novel which had a somewhat lonely feeling to it. A very quiet, little, unassuming, unadorned story which juxtaposes some very worldly issues like given up dreams and hopes, marriage, appearances versus inner life or grief with supernatural elements like talking mushrooms and a very dreamy, hazy atmosphere, blurring the lines between the two worlds. I did enjoy the eerie tone dominating the story from the very first page and the beautiful writing.
Song Yan leads an unfulfilled life in her Beijing apartment; having given up her dream of becoming a concert pianist she gives piano lessons to young students, she wants a child but not her husband and her daily life is marked by the oppressive presence of her mother in law, who came to live with them from the Yunnan region. When she starts receiving mystery packages with mushrooms in them but have no known sender, she also starts dreaming and talking in her dreams to a strange orange mushroom.
A short novel which had a somewhat lonely feeling to it. A very quiet, little, unassuming, unadorned story which juxtaposes some very worldly issues like given up dreams and hopes, marriage, appearances versus inner life or grief with supernatural elements like talking mushrooms and a very dreamy, hazy atmosphere, blurring the lines between the two worlds. I did enjoy the eerie tone dominating the story from the very first page and the beautiful writing.
January 14, 2023
5/5 stars
“Loss came in all shapes and forms, but it never occurred to me until now that you could lose the things you never had.”
At this point, I feel like my entire list of favourite reads of 2022 is going to be made up of marmite books that people will either love or hate, but I will be confidently championing this one as a book that I loved to my core. Top 5 reads of 2022, and a book I see myself revisiting in the future many times.
Ghost Music is a resonant and reflective character piece with some admittedly bizarre element of magical realism mixed in. Our protagonist Song Yan is a young woman in the midst of a quiet identity crisis. She has given up her lifetime dream of becoming a concert pianist, in favour of becoming a housewife to her new husband, and only touches the piano to tutor a handful of children on the side. As her husband travels for work, the silence of their empty apartment is filled only with the tentative notes of her pupils, and the recent addition of her argumentative mother-in-laws critiques on her life. Tensions rise in the household until their holding-pattern is broken by a mysterious delivery of mushrooms from an unknown sender. These mushrooms form a conversation starter between the two women, as well as a starting point for a quest for the mysterious gifter, that will set Song Yan on the trail of a world-famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago.
Ghost Music brilliantly tells a story of young Chinese woman desperately trying to fit into the mould she feels set out for her, yet experiencing the dissonance and friction of that mould mismatching with her own dreams. It’s a novel that is, at its core, about grief. Not just the traditional kind over the loss of a loved one, but the kind of grief you can feel over the loss of your own identity and the future you envisioned. Each of the central characters (Song Yan, her mother in law, her husband and even Bai Yu) carries with them their own regrets of a previous life and roads not taken. Song Yan’s journey throughout these pages is a powerful search for identity and meaning in her plan-B, whilst shedding the haunting of a life she could’ve lived.
An Yu manages to pack so much layering into such a short novel and her writing has matured so much since her already brilliant debut Braised Pork. Her prose flows like music and weaves together the intricate chords of these different motifs and themes to create a beautifully melancholic symphony.
Even readers who don’t typically enjoy magical realism need not be intimidated by the “magical element” of the fungi in this novel. They are never plot point in themselves, but rather function as a catalyst. They connect and spark conversations about the past between Song Yan and her mother-in-law as the two of them make them into soup. They sprout from dark and forgotten places as a reminder of a past in decay. They appear in Song Yan’s dreams to blur the line between reality and the life she imagined. They are what I wish a good magical realist element to be: an accentuation of reality rather than a magical trope in their own right.
Overall, I deeply loved Ghost Music and was left with its deep and melancholic sounds resonating in my mind until now. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, even though I can see why some readers found it to be too “experimental/weird”.
Many thanks to Grove Press, Recorded Books and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of one of my favourite reads of the year. All opinions are my own.
“Loss came in all shapes and forms, but it never occurred to me until now that you could lose the things you never had.”
At this point, I feel like my entire list of favourite reads of 2022 is going to be made up of marmite books that people will either love or hate, but I will be confidently championing this one as a book that I loved to my core. Top 5 reads of 2022, and a book I see myself revisiting in the future many times.
Ghost Music is a resonant and reflective character piece with some admittedly bizarre element of magical realism mixed in. Our protagonist Song Yan is a young woman in the midst of a quiet identity crisis. She has given up her lifetime dream of becoming a concert pianist, in favour of becoming a housewife to her new husband, and only touches the piano to tutor a handful of children on the side. As her husband travels for work, the silence of their empty apartment is filled only with the tentative notes of her pupils, and the recent addition of her argumentative mother-in-laws critiques on her life. Tensions rise in the household until their holding-pattern is broken by a mysterious delivery of mushrooms from an unknown sender. These mushrooms form a conversation starter between the two women, as well as a starting point for a quest for the mysterious gifter, that will set Song Yan on the trail of a world-famous pianist who disappeared a decade ago.
Ghost Music brilliantly tells a story of young Chinese woman desperately trying to fit into the mould she feels set out for her, yet experiencing the dissonance and friction of that mould mismatching with her own dreams. It’s a novel that is, at its core, about grief. Not just the traditional kind over the loss of a loved one, but the kind of grief you can feel over the loss of your own identity and the future you envisioned. Each of the central characters (Song Yan, her mother in law, her husband and even Bai Yu) carries with them their own regrets of a previous life and roads not taken. Song Yan’s journey throughout these pages is a powerful search for identity and meaning in her plan-B, whilst shedding the haunting of a life she could’ve lived.
An Yu manages to pack so much layering into such a short novel and her writing has matured so much since her already brilliant debut Braised Pork. Her prose flows like music and weaves together the intricate chords of these different motifs and themes to create a beautifully melancholic symphony.
Even readers who don’t typically enjoy magical realism need not be intimidated by the “magical element” of the fungi in this novel. They are never plot point in themselves, but rather function as a catalyst. They connect and spark conversations about the past between Song Yan and her mother-in-law as the two of them make them into soup. They sprout from dark and forgotten places as a reminder of a past in decay. They appear in Song Yan’s dreams to blur the line between reality and the life she imagined. They are what I wish a good magical realist element to be: an accentuation of reality rather than a magical trope in their own right.
Overall, I deeply loved Ghost Music and was left with its deep and melancholic sounds resonating in my mind until now. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, even though I can see why some readers found it to be too “experimental/weird”.
Many thanks to Grove Press, Recorded Books and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of one of my favourite reads of the year. All opinions are my own.
January 10, 2023
Being trapped in a small apartment with one's mother-in-law would be a nightmare hell on earth for me.
Poor Song Yan suffers in silence as her husband's mother constantly berates her for having a silly little career, but not having produced a grandchild (even though it is really Son Yan's husband who has no interest in fathering children.)
I thought I would be relieved once Song Yan managed to shed herself of these two negative people, but that's where the story took a nosedive for me. That dramatic tension was apparently a key element in the tale, and once that was gone, there seemed to be little to hold the story together.
My rating hovers around 3.5 stars, but I'll assign four for the languid, dreamy quality to An Yu's writing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for sharing this one.
Poor Song Yan suffers in silence as her husband's mother constantly berates her for having a silly little career, but not having produced a grandchild (even though it is really Son Yan's husband who has no interest in fathering children.)
I thought I would be relieved once Song Yan managed to shed herself of these two negative people, but that's where the story took a nosedive for me. That dramatic tension was apparently a key element in the tale, and once that was gone, there seemed to be little to hold the story together.
My rating hovers around 3.5 stars, but I'll assign four for the languid, dreamy quality to An Yu's writing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for sharing this one.
July 3, 2024
För tre år sedan förtrollades jag av Vegetarianen och den har fortfarande inte lämnat mig. Äntligen har jag i Efterklang hittat en lika feministisk, suggestiv och öppen roman som håller mig hänförd från första och troligen långt efter det sista ordet. An Yu bjuder in läsaren att vara del i den kreativa processen och betydelseskapandet. Så här sitter jag nu framför datorn, vildögd och uppfylld av inspiration, redo att hamra fram min läsning av vad som kanske är årets bästa läsupplevelse.
”Vi är alla som träd, tänkte jag. Våra huvuden vajar i vinden och våra rötter är begravda i jorden, osynliga för alla och ibland bortglömda till och med av oss själva.”
Jag börjar med svamparna som i Efterklang är av samma dignitet som vore de planeter kretsande kring romanens jagberättare Song Yan. Likt lysande stjärnor svävar de på den vackra omslagsbildens natthimmel, denna svarta oändlighet av ingenting. Svampar är – kanske ännu mer än träd – som isberg då den synliga toppen blott är en bråkdel av det som finns under ytan. Jag tror att An Yu finner den metaforen lämplig även för människor. Song Yan drömmer om, pratar med, spelar piano för, odlar och tillagar svampar som kommer i mystiska paket. Rätterna hon och hennes svärmor knåpar samman läskar läsaren och ger kanske konsumenterna ett visst rus. Svampar växer inte bara i jord och skog utan kan också odlas i badrummet. Yus karaktärer existerar i storstaden Peking trots att den urbana miljön egentligen inte är helt människovänlig.
”Att leva är det mest sällsynta i världen. De flesta existerar, det är allt.” /Oscar Wilde
Efterklang är en stillsam och lågmäld roman som samtidigt är oerhört kraftfull och omskakande. Den undersöker vad det är att leva fullt ut och hur man lyckas omsätta sin vilja praktiskt. I sin jakt på ljudet av att vara vid liv förmår författaren gestalta en tystnad som dånar genom kroppen. Jag älskar det!
”Under mina år på universitetet hade jag ägnat somrarna åt att ta extrakurser, så att jag skulle kunna ta examen tidigt. Jag måste ha trott att om jag blev klar med studierna i förtid så skulle det innebära att jag var mycket mer begåvad än andra. Jag hade så mycket energi och var så beslutsam att det kändes som om jag skulle flyga iväg som en raket mot berömmelsens planet. Men det visade sig att bränslet jag använde så småningom tog slut, precis som min ungdom.”
Om jag skulle komma fram till handlingen då. Song Yan satsade allt för att fylla ut sin fars skor och som honom bli konsertpianist. I samma veva som hon träffade sin man Bowen resignerade hon inför tidigare ambitioner, hon började kuva sin kreativa sida, jobba som pianolärare och smida planer inför att bli mor. Tre år senare, när svärmor flyttar in hos dem dras skärpet åt kring Song Yans redan ansatta mellangärde. Svärmor höjer ribban för Song Yan som hustru och hon vill ha barnbarn. Trots att det är Bowen som är motvalls och prioriterar sin karriär som bilförsäljare, är det givetvis kvinnan som får bära hundhuvudet. Bowen är mycket tystlåten och snål med sig själv och det visar sig att han har hemligheter för sin fru. Dessa tre karaktärer existerar mer än de lever, deras jag är i obalans – Song Yan verkar närmaste bedövad, jagad av undertryckt sorg och kreativitet – och de är alla ensamma i sig själva på ett djupt sorgligt sätt.
Tur då att det finns musik! Och svamp. Svamparna tycks likt tändstickor få slocknade själars lågor att börja flamma. Tungors band lossnar och Song Yan vågar åter spela piano. Men allt som glimmar hörs icke! An Yu har inspirerats av kompositören John Cage som med sin tysta komposition 4’33 visar att tystnaden är lika viktig som ljudet i musik. Tystnad kontra ljud är ett huvudtema i Efterklang vars engelska titel är Ghost Music. Det som hörs kan säga lika mycket som det som inte hörs och det som förtigs är kanske mer betydelsefullt än det som uttalas. Även tystnaden har efterklang, i den tycks Song Yan fastnat.
”Jag har alltid förundrats över hur tystnaden i ett rum inte sänker sig i samma stund som musiken tar slut, utan först några ögonblick efter att den sista tonen har klingat ut.”
Tur också att det finns vänner! Nini är protagonistens vän och deras personligheter är diametralt motsatta i det att Nini kan ge fullt uttryck åt sina känslor. ”Hon har blottat kärnan i de mänskliga känslornas komplexitet och accepterat dem allihop..” Nini breddar den redan vida romanen för mig, den handlar inte längre bara om feminism och normer, frihetslängtan, kreativitet och identitet, kärlek och själens obotliga ensamhet utan nu också om sorgbearbetning och känslor. Om Jesper Juul i sin himmel kunnat läsa den här boken tror jag han skulle jubla. Efterklang är för mig också ett ode till aggressionen och en varning om vilka följderna kan bli av att lägga locket på ilskan som ju har till syfte att skydda och rädda jaget ur nedbrytande situationer.
”Empati är en lögnare. Den förför oss med ett intryck av osjälviskhet, men alla de känslor vi tror att vi förstår begränsas i själva verket av storleken på våra egna hjärtan. Vi lever ensamma, i våra separata kroppar.”
Tråden i den här vackert skrivna och allmängiltiga sagan är brandgul, som själens brinnande låga. Det apelsinfärgade dammet ser jag som Song Yans undanträngda sorg och stumma själ materialiserad. När de brandgula lågorna förvandlar pianot till aska är det ett sätt för Song Yan att genomleva, uthärda och göra sig av med smärtan över den pianist hon aldrig blev. Hennes livsdröm går upp i rök vilket lämnar plats för acceptans och nya drömmar. När efterklangen tystnat kan hon skapa nya ljud och tystnader.
”..vi känner oss instängda överallt, men […] kan hitta frihet på samma ställen.”
Efterklang är en feelbad-roman besjälad av kraft där sinne- och andevärldar mötas, ljuv musik och tystnad uppstår. Denna psykedeliska läsupplevelse helt utan förutsägbarhet är oerhört fint översatt av Anna Gustafsson Chen. Jag vet inte vad som är dröm och verklighet, till skillnad från när jag läste Rapport om Adam, stör det mig här inte alls. Tvärtom, här är gåtfullheten en välsmakande krydda.
”Han hade fått mig att inse det enkla faktum att vi inte är bundna till den här världen, vi är på jakt efter den.”
Bäst som jag sitter där i mitt ljuvliga rus blir jag glasklar och iskall. Jag läser orden: ”jag hade faktiskt aldrig lärt känna Bai Yu. Mina intryck av honom var inget mer än en projektion av mig sj��lv” och får en mycket obehaglig insikt. Jag har kanske inte heller lärt känna människor, tänk om jag använt dem som projektionsytor för mig själv. Åh hjälp! Var är nu svamparna när man behöver dem? Ge mig svamp!
”Vi är alla som träd, tänkte jag. Våra huvuden vajar i vinden och våra rötter är begravda i jorden, osynliga för alla och ibland bortglömda till och med av oss själva.”
Jag börjar med svamparna som i Efterklang är av samma dignitet som vore de planeter kretsande kring romanens jagberättare Song Yan. Likt lysande stjärnor svävar de på den vackra omslagsbildens natthimmel, denna svarta oändlighet av ingenting. Svampar är – kanske ännu mer än träd – som isberg då den synliga toppen blott är en bråkdel av det som finns under ytan. Jag tror att An Yu finner den metaforen lämplig även för människor. Song Yan drömmer om, pratar med, spelar piano för, odlar och tillagar svampar som kommer i mystiska paket. Rätterna hon och hennes svärmor knåpar samman läskar läsaren och ger kanske konsumenterna ett visst rus. Svampar växer inte bara i jord och skog utan kan också odlas i badrummet. Yus karaktärer existerar i storstaden Peking trots att den urbana miljön egentligen inte är helt människovänlig.
”Att leva är det mest sällsynta i världen. De flesta existerar, det är allt.” /Oscar Wilde
Efterklang är en stillsam och lågmäld roman som samtidigt är oerhört kraftfull och omskakande. Den undersöker vad det är att leva fullt ut och hur man lyckas omsätta sin vilja praktiskt. I sin jakt på ljudet av att vara vid liv förmår författaren gestalta en tystnad som dånar genom kroppen. Jag älskar det!
”Under mina år på universitetet hade jag ägnat somrarna åt att ta extrakurser, så att jag skulle kunna ta examen tidigt. Jag måste ha trott att om jag blev klar med studierna i förtid så skulle det innebära att jag var mycket mer begåvad än andra. Jag hade så mycket energi och var så beslutsam att det kändes som om jag skulle flyga iväg som en raket mot berömmelsens planet. Men det visade sig att bränslet jag använde så småningom tog slut, precis som min ungdom.”
Om jag skulle komma fram till handlingen då. Song Yan satsade allt för att fylla ut sin fars skor och som honom bli konsertpianist. I samma veva som hon träffade sin man Bowen resignerade hon inför tidigare ambitioner, hon började kuva sin kreativa sida, jobba som pianolärare och smida planer inför att bli mor. Tre år senare, när svärmor flyttar in hos dem dras skärpet åt kring Song Yans redan ansatta mellangärde. Svärmor höjer ribban för Song Yan som hustru och hon vill ha barnbarn. Trots att det är Bowen som är motvalls och prioriterar sin karriär som bilförsäljare, är det givetvis kvinnan som får bära hundhuvudet. Bowen är mycket tystlåten och snål med sig själv och det visar sig att han har hemligheter för sin fru. Dessa tre karaktärer existerar mer än de lever, deras jag är i obalans – Song Yan verkar närmaste bedövad, jagad av undertryckt sorg och kreativitet – och de är alla ensamma i sig själva på ett djupt sorgligt sätt.
Tur då att det finns musik! Och svamp. Svamparna tycks likt tändstickor få slocknade själars lågor att börja flamma. Tungors band lossnar och Song Yan vågar åter spela piano. Men allt som glimmar hörs icke! An Yu har inspirerats av kompositören John Cage som med sin tysta komposition 4’33 visar att tystnaden är lika viktig som ljudet i musik. Tystnad kontra ljud är ett huvudtema i Efterklang vars engelska titel är Ghost Music. Det som hörs kan säga lika mycket som det som inte hörs och det som förtigs är kanske mer betydelsefullt än det som uttalas. Även tystnaden har efterklang, i den tycks Song Yan fastnat.
”Jag har alltid förundrats över hur tystnaden i ett rum inte sänker sig i samma stund som musiken tar slut, utan först några ögonblick efter att den sista tonen har klingat ut.”
Tur också att det finns vänner! Nini är protagonistens vän och deras personligheter är diametralt motsatta i det att Nini kan ge fullt uttryck åt sina känslor. ”Hon har blottat kärnan i de mänskliga känslornas komplexitet och accepterat dem allihop..” Nini breddar den redan vida romanen för mig, den handlar inte längre bara om feminism och normer, frihetslängtan, kreativitet och identitet, kärlek och själens obotliga ensamhet utan nu också om sorgbearbetning och känslor. Om Jesper Juul i sin himmel kunnat läsa den här boken tror jag han skulle jubla. Efterklang är för mig också ett ode till aggressionen och en varning om vilka följderna kan bli av att lägga locket på ilskan som ju har till syfte att skydda och rädda jaget ur nedbrytande situationer.
”Empati är en lögnare. Den förför oss med ett intryck av osjälviskhet, men alla de känslor vi tror att vi förstår begränsas i själva verket av storleken på våra egna hjärtan. Vi lever ensamma, i våra separata kroppar.”
Tråden i den här vackert skrivna och allmängiltiga sagan är brandgul, som själens brinnande låga. Det apelsinfärgade dammet ser jag som Song Yans undanträngda sorg och stumma själ materialiserad. När de brandgula lågorna förvandlar pianot till aska är det ett sätt för Song Yan att genomleva, uthärda och göra sig av med smärtan över den pianist hon aldrig blev. Hennes livsdröm går upp i rök vilket lämnar plats för acceptans och nya drömmar. När efterklangen tystnat kan hon skapa nya ljud och tystnader.
”..vi känner oss instängda överallt, men […] kan hitta frihet på samma ställen.”
Efterklang är en feelbad-roman besjälad av kraft där sinne- och andevärldar mötas, ljuv musik och tystnad uppstår. Denna psykedeliska läsupplevelse helt utan förutsägbarhet är oerhört fint översatt av Anna Gustafsson Chen. Jag vet inte vad som är dröm och verklighet, till skillnad från när jag läste Rapport om Adam, stör det mig här inte alls. Tvärtom, här är gåtfullheten en välsmakande krydda.
”Han hade fått mig att inse det enkla faktum att vi inte är bundna till den här världen, vi är på jakt efter den.”
Bäst som jag sitter där i mitt ljuvliga rus blir jag glasklar och iskall. Jag läser orden: ”jag hade faktiskt aldrig lärt känna Bai Yu. Mina intryck av honom var inget mer än en projektion av mig sj��lv” och får en mycket obehaglig insikt. Jag har kanske inte heller lärt känna människor, tänk om jag använt dem som projektionsytor för mig själv. Åh hjälp! Var är nu svamparna när man behöver dem? Ge mig svamp!
May 7, 2023
Wise. Beautiful. Human.
“If I can’t even feel my existence, how could I possibly think about living?”
“Empathy is a liar. It seduces us with the impression of selflessness.”
“When we wake up, we hardly ever consciously acknowledge the pleasure of being able to live another day, do we?”
“And he will understand that a place can die with a person.”
Basically, a lyrical story about the human experience.
“If I can’t even feel my existence, how could I possibly think about living?”
“Empathy is a liar. It seduces us with the impression of selflessness.”
“When we wake up, we hardly ever consciously acknowledge the pleasure of being able to live another day, do we?”
“And he will understand that a place can die with a person.”
Basically, a lyrical story about the human experience.
Read
January 5, 2023Music, mushrooms, and marriage.
What I liked:
—The descriptions of food and music.
—The author's lyrical writing style
What didn't work for me:
—The MC's passivity
—The various themes never seemed to come together. To use a culinary metaphor, the story felt undercooked.
Thank you to @libro.fm for the gifted audiobook. I enjoyed the narrator's performance.
What I liked:
—The descriptions of food and music.
—The author's lyrical writing style
What didn't work for me:
—The MC's passivity
—The various themes never seemed to come together. To use a culinary metaphor, the story felt undercooked.
Thank you to @libro.fm for the gifted audiobook. I enjoyed the narrator's performance.
February 7, 2023
Unsatisfied woman lives with workaholic husband and mildly annoying mother in law. She’d rather talk to mushrooms.
May 23, 2022
Every now and then I encounter a book that leaves me in awe of the author’s brain and this is one of those books. How could such a beautifully simple story even come from one person’s mind? This book has a musical style that pours out from the pages like a song and makes you listen to the subtleties of life and the meaning behind it all. While the plot may not seem action rich you are still driven in a desire to see what will happen next.
Grappling with the topics of life, love and purpose, An Yu takes us on a dreamlike journey into the forgotten small magical parts of living life. Like a piece of music, we are given a glimpse into the life of Song Yan, a former pianist that now teaches children how to play instead of playing for herself. She lives a life of isolation because her husband is a closed room and is frequently away on business. Her windowed mother-in-law moves into their apartment around the same time mysterious boxes of mushrooms begin to arrive in the mail. When the mushrooms stop coming to the apartment, she receives a letter from a stranger claiming to be Bai Yu, a former piano prodigy that has been missing for years, that is asking her to come to his house. Drawn by the mushrooms, the music, and her own inner turmoil she ventures into the unknown. She begins to learn of the choices that the people around her have made in their lives and how it has made them who they are. It opens her eyes to the fact that the choices she thinks she made, may not have even been choices, but more what happens when you fail to make a move with purpose. Was she really present in her life just because she has the memories that say she was? Once she opens her ears to the music in the world around her, she realizes that things are not as simple as she has always thought them to be and that safety, comfort, love, and loss are all part of the same fragile strand that is a human life. The fact that mushrooms thrive in darkness reminds you that beautiful things can come from our darkest of times.
For the first time in forever I found myself at a loss as to what to say in a review because I feel like I have steeped too long in its emotions and now they are mine. There are so many little things that went into what made Ghost Music great that every time I wrote a sentence, I wanted to add more and more, but then I went back and edited it out because I don’t want to give that part of myself away. It feels personal and vividly real. This is a story that will haunt me (in a good way) for a while, and I hope that anyone else who reads it will understand what I mean when they finish.
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with the ARC and the opportunity to read this book. As of now it is set for a January 2023 release.
Grappling with the topics of life, love and purpose, An Yu takes us on a dreamlike journey into the forgotten small magical parts of living life. Like a piece of music, we are given a glimpse into the life of Song Yan, a former pianist that now teaches children how to play instead of playing for herself. She lives a life of isolation because her husband is a closed room and is frequently away on business. Her windowed mother-in-law moves into their apartment around the same time mysterious boxes of mushrooms begin to arrive in the mail. When the mushrooms stop coming to the apartment, she receives a letter from a stranger claiming to be Bai Yu, a former piano prodigy that has been missing for years, that is asking her to come to his house. Drawn by the mushrooms, the music, and her own inner turmoil she ventures into the unknown. She begins to learn of the choices that the people around her have made in their lives and how it has made them who they are. It opens her eyes to the fact that the choices she thinks she made, may not have even been choices, but more what happens when you fail to make a move with purpose. Was she really present in her life just because she has the memories that say she was? Once she opens her ears to the music in the world around her, she realizes that things are not as simple as she has always thought them to be and that safety, comfort, love, and loss are all part of the same fragile strand that is a human life. The fact that mushrooms thrive in darkness reminds you that beautiful things can come from our darkest of times.
For the first time in forever I found myself at a loss as to what to say in a review because I feel like I have steeped too long in its emotions and now they are mine. There are so many little things that went into what made Ghost Music great that every time I wrote a sentence, I wanted to add more and more, but then I went back and edited it out because I don’t want to give that part of myself away. It feels personal and vividly real. This is a story that will haunt me (in a good way) for a while, and I hope that anyone else who reads it will understand what I mean when they finish.
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with the ARC and the opportunity to read this book. As of now it is set for a January 2023 release.
January 17, 2023
A melancholy, gentle read that wanders into uncanny and surreal territory, making this a quite special reading experience full of quiet moments and rich language.
Ghost Music centres around Song Yan, a woman living in Beijing. She always wanted to become a concert pianist, but gave up all hopes of making that her career years ago and now lives with her husband Bowen, who has been turning down her wishes of having a child for years now, stating that he's too busy with work and too hopeful of getting a promotion. When his mother arrives at their home, she involuntarily begins to shake things up, with tension in the household rising and the pressure for Song Yan intensifying. Things begin to change when a parcel of mushrooms arrives on their doorstep one week, and continues to get delivered each of the following weeks, one day including a letter that leads her to discover the hidden home of Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.
This is very successful in establishing a feeling of loneliness and isolation throughout the whole story. Song Yan is an interesting protagonist to have, as we really get to witness the grief she feels for her former self – the self that had hopes of becoming a concert pianist. Music plays a vital role in this novel, it's a form of self-expression, hope and escape, and the way An Yu describes music being played is vivid and truly delicious.
There's a lot left unexplained – but it suits the plot. An Yu strictly wanders the line between the real and imagined, the utterly human and the hauntingly dreamt. While we've got talking mushrooms that enjoy the sound of Chopin being played, the feelings that she channels are palpable. The ghosts of the past haunt this novel just as intensely as the fears of the present, with Song Yan finding out hurtful things about her husband's past that target her current worries and burdens. The relationship between the protagonist and her mother-in-law was also very interesting: they both want her to have a child and yet are unable to truly solve that problem with Bowen fighting his own demons.
For its relatively short length, this was a complex read that carries such a unique weight to it that I can definitely recommend this to people who aren't weirded out by stepping into other spheres.
Ghost Music centres around Song Yan, a woman living in Beijing. She always wanted to become a concert pianist, but gave up all hopes of making that her career years ago and now lives with her husband Bowen, who has been turning down her wishes of having a child for years now, stating that he's too busy with work and too hopeful of getting a promotion. When his mother arrives at their home, she involuntarily begins to shake things up, with tension in the household rising and the pressure for Song Yan intensifying. Things begin to change when a parcel of mushrooms arrives on their doorstep one week, and continues to get delivered each of the following weeks, one day including a letter that leads her to discover the hidden home of Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.
This is very successful in establishing a feeling of loneliness and isolation throughout the whole story. Song Yan is an interesting protagonist to have, as we really get to witness the grief she feels for her former self – the self that had hopes of becoming a concert pianist. Music plays a vital role in this novel, it's a form of self-expression, hope and escape, and the way An Yu describes music being played is vivid and truly delicious.
There's a lot left unexplained – but it suits the plot. An Yu strictly wanders the line between the real and imagined, the utterly human and the hauntingly dreamt. While we've got talking mushrooms that enjoy the sound of Chopin being played, the feelings that she channels are palpable. The ghosts of the past haunt this novel just as intensely as the fears of the present, with Song Yan finding out hurtful things about her husband's past that target her current worries and burdens. The relationship between the protagonist and her mother-in-law was also very interesting: they both want her to have a child and yet are unable to truly solve that problem with Bowen fighting his own demons.
For its relatively short length, this was a complex read that carries such a unique weight to it that I can definitely recommend this to people who aren't weirded out by stepping into other spheres.
December 8, 2022
A woman in Beijing gives up her promising career as a concert pianist to start a family with an annoying guy who finds his job more important than her, who treats her badly, makes his mother move in with them, doesn't want to have children and has been keeping important secrets about his past.
The woman is annoyingly passive about all of this, avoiding confrontation even though she is deeply affected. Strange things start happening to her, mostly to do with mushrooms (dreams with speaking mushrooms, mysterious mushroom deliveries). And then there is a piano prodigy, presumed long dead, who gets in touch with her.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as interesting as it may sound and I grew less convinced as the story progressed. I didn't feel in safe hands.
I do not mind a surreal story now and again and (without wanting to generalise) I often find Asian novelists particularly good at credibly integrating bizarre elements, but here their function was unclear to me.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The woman is annoyingly passive about all of this, avoiding confrontation even though she is deeply affected. Strange things start happening to her, mostly to do with mushrooms (dreams with speaking mushrooms, mysterious mushroom deliveries). And then there is a piano prodigy, presumed long dead, who gets in touch with her.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as interesting as it may sound and I grew less convinced as the story progressed. I didn't feel in safe hands.
I do not mind a surreal story now and again and (without wanting to generalise) I often find Asian novelists particularly good at credibly integrating bizarre elements, but here their function was unclear to me.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
February 24, 2023
Weird in a literary sort of way, Ghost Music follows a piano teacher married to a man who doesn't want children. But she wishes for them, and the mother-in-law who has come to live with them keeps prodding her about grandchildren. Meanwhile she has strange dreams of a talking mushroom and mysterious boxes of mushrooms begin arriving at their home. It's a novel about life and death, music and memory. Not my favorite thing but I liked it pretty well. Thank you to Libro.FM for providing an audio review copy, all opinions are my own.
December 22, 2023
Format: audiobook ~ Narrator: Vera Chok
Content: 3 stars ~ Narration: 4.5 stars
Complete audiobook review
Song Yan lives in Beijing with her husband, Bowen, and her mother-in-law. She could have been a concert pianist, but she left music college. Now, Song Yan is a piano teacher. She is not particularly happy because her husband is often absent, and she doesn’t get along with her mother-in-law.
I wanted to read this novel for a while now. But it looks like my expectations were too high. First thing, Song Yan is very passive. This could be fine, but the story seemed to unfold with no real purpose.
I often read literary fiction, Asian authors, and I love a really good surreal novel, but this one was only ok. It is one of those novels I will quickly forget because I didn’t see the real meaning.
Thanks to Recorded Books for the ALC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.
Content: 3 stars ~ Narration: 4.5 stars
Complete audiobook review
Song Yan lives in Beijing with her husband, Bowen, and her mother-in-law. She could have been a concert pianist, but she left music college. Now, Song Yan is a piano teacher. She is not particularly happy because her husband is often absent, and she doesn’t get along with her mother-in-law.
I wanted to read this novel for a while now. But it looks like my expectations were too high. First thing, Song Yan is very passive. This could be fine, but the story seemed to unfold with no real purpose.
I often read literary fiction, Asian authors, and I love a really good surreal novel, but this one was only ok. It is one of those novels I will quickly forget because I didn’t see the real meaning.
Thanks to Recorded Books for the ALC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.
December 14, 2023
‘What do you think the sound of being alive is?’
The character work and overall plot are not my favourite. Even the magic-realist elements aren’t used to their full potential. You can see where the story with Bai Yu is going the moment the protagonist steps into the house, while the rest of the characters are either undistinguishable or one-dimensional. What I did like about Ghost Music is the clear prose: there are some beautiful passages in here, mostly to do with music and the performance of it.
“We pour a bit of ourselves into everything we do, every note we play, I thought, and unwittingly, one fragment at a time, we leave ourselves in the past.”
The character work and overall plot are not my favourite. Even the magic-realist elements aren’t used to their full potential. You can see where the story with Bai Yu is going the moment the protagonist steps into the house, while the rest of the characters are either undistinguishable or one-dimensional. What I did like about Ghost Music is the clear prose: there are some beautiful passages in here, mostly to do with music and the performance of it.
“We pour a bit of ourselves into everything we do, every note we play, I thought, and unwittingly, one fragment at a time, we leave ourselves in the past.”
July 20, 2023
This novel started off well - nice writing, interesting premise, characters the reader could relate to... and then nothing happened. I'm still not sure what the whole point of this novel was supposed to be. The ending was nebulous, just drifting off. Nothing was resolved. The magic talking mushrooms didn't really have a purpose in the novel either. You could take out those few paragraphs were they featured and it wouldn't change a thing. Thoroughly unsatisfying in the end.
March 19, 2023
Ghost Music is a beautifully written novel. I was in love with the sheer poetry of it, immersed in making sense of the symbolism, and captivated by the profound, melancholic reflections. The story is equal parts intriguing and upsetting, but I would have swallowed my upset if it had ended better
From this point on, I will be spoiling the story.
I hated Bowen. Passionately. Perhaps, in some ways, his attitude triggered me. I wanted Song Yan to leave him and although she finally did, I was not satisfied with the suggested impermanence of it. Furthermore, as things concluded, it felt like everything still revolved around Bowen. He was finally being honest with Song Yan and himself, ultimately leading to an emotional outburst, but I felt very little sympathy for him. He’d not been assigned any redeeming characteristics and while I can understand how his childhood circumstances affected the man he became, he was nasty and selfish. The fact that Song Yan was so gentle with him in the end, choosing to offer comfort, and allowing him to stay the night, bothered me immensely. This all suggested the possibility of reconciliation. And the “woe is me” over Julia and their child’s deaths, rather than an actual acknowledgement of the part he played, angered me.
I realize this story revolves around an entirely different culture than the one I’m accustomed to. I know little of their beliefs surrounding divorce, but I cannot see how this is a feminist tale. While it did feel as if Song Yan grew a little by the end, it wasn’t enough for her to fully see Bowen for who he was. He wasn’t a good man and no emotional confessions would change that. I wanted her to stand up to him, hold him accountable, and find freedom in living her life without him. I won’t call this story directionless, but it didn’t go in a direction I liked.
It hurts my heart to not feel compelled to rate this better since I loved the writing so much, but gorgeous, meaningful prose cannot make up for what the story lacked.
From this point on, I will be spoiling the story.
I hated Bowen. Passionately. Perhaps, in some ways, his attitude triggered me. I wanted Song Yan to leave him and although she finally did, I was not satisfied with the suggested impermanence of it. Furthermore, as things concluded, it felt like everything still revolved around Bowen. He was finally being honest with Song Yan and himself, ultimately leading to an emotional outburst, but I felt very little sympathy for him. He’d not been assigned any redeeming characteristics and while I can understand how his childhood circumstances affected the man he became, he was nasty and selfish. The fact that Song Yan was so gentle with him in the end, choosing to offer comfort, and allowing him to stay the night, bothered me immensely. This all suggested the possibility of reconciliation. And the “woe is me” over Julia and their child’s deaths, rather than an actual acknowledgement of the part he played, angered me.
I realize this story revolves around an entirely different culture than the one I’m accustomed to. I know little of their beliefs surrounding divorce, but I cannot see how this is a feminist tale. While it did feel as if Song Yan grew a little by the end, it wasn’t enough for her to fully see Bowen for who he was. He wasn’t a good man and no emotional confessions would change that. I wanted her to stand up to him, hold him accountable, and find freedom in living her life without him. I won’t call this story directionless, but it didn’t go in a direction I liked.
It hurts my heart to not feel compelled to rate this better since I loved the writing so much, but gorgeous, meaningful prose cannot make up for what the story lacked.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 1, 2022
My earlier opinion of Braised Pork, the author's earlier book, could serve as well here. She is still utilizing foods in her metaphoric plots, still has a couple not quite connecting, and still examining lives of upper middle class citizens of Beijing. This one didn't run as smoothly as the earlier effort.
January 23, 2024
What was real? Were the mushrooms real? Perhaps not the talking ones! Were the orange walls real? Was Bai Yu, a pianist who had disappeared without trace 10 years before, real, a ghost, or imaginary? Did Song Yan have a breakdown? A psychotic episode? This book is full of symbolism but I’m not sure how much I understood. Did it matter?
This is a hypnotic book. I could identify with Song Yan because I studied piano for years, playing for hours every day, striving to be better. I chose to do that though, unlike Song Yan whose talent was kindled by her concert pianist father. She felt obliged to practise, to be as good as she could, but eventually she walked away as it wasn’t giving her pleasure. It was a duty.
The writing is simple and often brutally honest:
Empathy is a liar. It seduces us with the impression of selflessness, yet whatever feelings we think we can fathom are confined by the extent of our own hearts. We are living on our own, in our separate bodies. That was something I didn’t know how to accept. ….
I’d always known that I was on my own, that I existed as a person separate from others, but to accept that fact - to walk a solitary path without fear - took a whole other kind of bravery.
It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to find similarities between Song Yan and Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. There is no abuse from Song Yan’s husband, Bowen, but he doesn’t treat her well, leaving her for months at a time to work far away, excluding her from great swathes of his life, causing her to feel lonely even when she’s lying beside him - possibly the most profound loneliness there is.
I found this book intriguing, sometimes enchanting, compelling and bemusing, often all on the one page! Because I’m sure I missed many of the deeper nuances, I can only give it 4 stars but that reflects my experience of it rather than the quality of the writing.
This is a hypnotic book. I could identify with Song Yan because I studied piano for years, playing for hours every day, striving to be better. I chose to do that though, unlike Song Yan whose talent was kindled by her concert pianist father. She felt obliged to practise, to be as good as she could, but eventually she walked away as it wasn’t giving her pleasure. It was a duty.
The writing is simple and often brutally honest:
Empathy is a liar. It seduces us with the impression of selflessness, yet whatever feelings we think we can fathom are confined by the extent of our own hearts. We are living on our own, in our separate bodies. That was something I didn’t know how to accept. ….
I’d always known that I was on my own, that I existed as a person separate from others, but to accept that fact - to walk a solitary path without fear - took a whole other kind of bravery.
It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to find similarities between Song Yan and Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. There is no abuse from Song Yan’s husband, Bowen, but he doesn’t treat her well, leaving her for months at a time to work far away, excluding her from great swathes of his life, causing her to feel lonely even when she’s lying beside him - possibly the most profound loneliness there is.
I found this book intriguing, sometimes enchanting, compelling and bemusing, often all on the one page! Because I’m sure I missed many of the deeper nuances, I can only give it 4 stars but that reflects my experience of it rather than the quality of the writing.
May 28, 2023
Very strange little book. I’m not sure I totally “get” it, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. Further review to come!
November 28, 2024
En av personerna i boken citerar Oscar Wilde: ”Att leva är det mest sällsynta i världen. De flesta existerar, det är allt” Kanske behöver vi alla en orange svamp som dyker upp och får oss att börja reflektera över vad vi gör med våra liv.
Jag gillar det lite drömska i boken, de trassliga relationerna, det sårbara, de märkliga sammanträffandena. Att ingenting får en enkel lösning. Trots talande svampar rätt realistiskt.
Jag gillar det lite drömska i boken, de trassliga relationerna, det sårbara, de märkliga sammanträffandena. Att ingenting får en enkel lösning. Trots talande svampar rätt realistiskt.
August 27, 2025
3.25/5
“A place can die with a person.”
“A place can die with a person.”
June 20, 2025
Piękna, subtelna, wrażliwa rzecz. O pustce i stracie. Śliczna.
May 7, 2022
"Its high-pitched voice now took on a hint of melancholy, as though it couldn't put into words what it really was. To compare itself with a ghost meant that it had to abandon something important in its essence, like a raindrop that feel through the air knowing that it would lose its shape forever upon hitting the ground."
Ghost Music is a surreal, dreamlike novel that contemplates life, love and existentialism through slow, patient slices of everyday life. The story is punctuated with encounters with glowing mushrooms, or "spirits", that appear and plead only to be remembered forever. And of course, between An Yu's beautiful prose and dreamy writing, there is a plot buried somewhere deep inside, shaping the progression throughout the different sections.
In modern day Beijing, Song Yan lives with her husband, Yang Bowen, and Bowen's infirm mother in a small apartment. Song Yan was a former pianist whose parents held her to expectations she could not keep, and so after marrying, she makes a living teaching piano to young children. Bowen is a BMW car salesman fleeing his claustrophobic hometown in Yunnan, and his indifferent/distant relationship with Song Yan is every bit as dysfunctional as it is infuriating. Bowen's mother only wishes for her son to leave behind a legacy of his own in the form of children, but Bowen pushes back at every step, and it is this tension that drives the first plot of the story.
In the second storyline, Bai Yu, a once-respected piano prodigy, summons Song Yan to his house through the lucre of mushrooms and begs her to help him find proof that he is living through his music. I choose to believe that it was not coincidence Bai Yu summoned her, and it is here that some of the more abstract ideas are explored: the glowing mushrooms, the not-quite-corporealness of Bai Yu, the strange void formed from music. Bai Yu lives in one of Beijing's last hutongs, or narrow streets full of ancient courtyards, and its intersection between that which is old and new seems all too fitting for his character theme, while introducing surreal imagery of its own.
The introduced characters are so beautifully executed, and in such little text too. We are given the perspective of Song Yan's character, and it is through this that we see the inner workings of her mind and how she factors in every decision. Song Yan is not a perfect character by any means — she quails at confrontation at every moment, and is unable to build deep connections with other people. At first, I didn't understand Bowen's motivations or thought process either, but at the end I think it's crucial to remember that he, like his wife or any other character, are only human. Their flaws are unabashedly exposed to the world no matter how hard they try to fight it. And though I didn't like most of the characters on their own, voyuering on their interactions with each other made me enjoy their dynamics with each other.
Additionally, some of the questions or initial plotlines that An Yu introduces have no resolution. At the beginning, this infuriated me. However, as I kept reading, I found that I enjoyed the subversion of expectations: nothing was explained, but again, few things in life are. This, too, adds to the dream-like effect of the entire story, and its characters navigate through this world lost, dazed and confused. There is no happy ending for any of An Yu's characters, only continual existence, and sometimes not even that. What does it mean to truly have a purpose in life? How does one break free from merely existing?
Overall, Ghost Music was a delightful, beautifully illustrated novel that also makes for a quick fantasy/magic realism read. I appreciated its length and thought that the surrealism was executed extremely well.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Ghost Music is a surreal, dreamlike novel that contemplates life, love and existentialism through slow, patient slices of everyday life. The story is punctuated with encounters with glowing mushrooms, or "spirits", that appear and plead only to be remembered forever. And of course, between An Yu's beautiful prose and dreamy writing, there is a plot buried somewhere deep inside, shaping the progression throughout the different sections.
In modern day Beijing, Song Yan lives with her husband, Yang Bowen, and Bowen's infirm mother in a small apartment. Song Yan was a former pianist whose parents held her to expectations she could not keep, and so after marrying, she makes a living teaching piano to young children. Bowen is a BMW car salesman fleeing his claustrophobic hometown in Yunnan, and his indifferent/distant relationship with Song Yan is every bit as dysfunctional as it is infuriating. Bowen's mother only wishes for her son to leave behind a legacy of his own in the form of children, but Bowen pushes back at every step, and it is this tension that drives the first plot of the story.
In the second storyline, Bai Yu, a once-respected piano prodigy, summons Song Yan to his house through the lucre of mushrooms and begs her to help him find proof that he is living through his music. I choose to believe that it was not coincidence Bai Yu summoned her, and it is here that some of the more abstract ideas are explored: the glowing mushrooms, the not-quite-corporealness of Bai Yu, the strange void formed from music. Bai Yu lives in one of Beijing's last hutongs, or narrow streets full of ancient courtyards, and its intersection between that which is old and new seems all too fitting for his character theme, while introducing surreal imagery of its own.
The introduced characters are so beautifully executed, and in such little text too. We are given the perspective of Song Yan's character, and it is through this that we see the inner workings of her mind and how she factors in every decision. Song Yan is not a perfect character by any means — she quails at confrontation at every moment, and is unable to build deep connections with other people. At first, I didn't understand Bowen's motivations or thought process either, but at the end I think it's crucial to remember that he, like his wife or any other character, are only human. Their flaws are unabashedly exposed to the world no matter how hard they try to fight it. And though I didn't like most of the characters on their own, voyuering on their interactions with each other made me enjoy their dynamics with each other.
Additionally, some of the questions or initial plotlines that An Yu introduces have no resolution. At the beginning, this infuriated me. However, as I kept reading, I found that I enjoyed the subversion of expectations: nothing was explained, but again, few things in life are. This, too, adds to the dream-like effect of the entire story, and its characters navigate through this world lost, dazed and confused. There is no happy ending for any of An Yu's characters, only continual existence, and sometimes not even that. What does it mean to truly have a purpose in life? How does one break free from merely existing?
Overall, Ghost Music was a delightful, beautifully illustrated novel that also makes for a quick fantasy/magic realism read. I appreciated its length and thought that the surrealism was executed extremely well.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
May 10, 2022
Ghost Music was a surreal dream of a book, the beautiful prose weaving a path from one part of the story to the next much like a piece of music leading from one movement to another. There is a plot, but many of its points are left unresolved at the end, as the point is more about the journey. Song Yan was a character I connected with right from the start, and it was a delight to follow her throughout the novel as she assessed her life and feelings through the various revelations that came to light about those around her, interspersed with her strange interactions with the orange mushrooms. This was the kind of story you sink into at the moment of reading but then dwell on in more depth after you've put the book down. I loved every minute of reading it and would definitely pick up another book by An Yu in the future. It gets five stars from me.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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