Ghost Music - by An Yu (Hardcover)

About the Book

"From the author of the "original and electric" Braised Pork (Time), An Yu's enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musician. 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. A 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"--

Book Synopsis

From the author of the "original and electric" Braised Pork (Time), An Yu's enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musician

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.

A 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.

Review Quotes

Praise for Ghost Music:

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME and Washington Independent Review of Books
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection

"Spellbinding and atmospheric . . . 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. Yu braids the mundane and the magical together with a gentle hand . . . 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. 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

"The story at the centre of Ghost Music revolves around the struggles of living with an elderly in-law, the collapse of a marriage, and more generally the pressures on women to be doting wives in Chinese society. 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 . . . An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound."--Claire Kohda, Guardian

"An Yu's Ghost Music is a novel haunted in every way--psychologically, philosophically, and literally. This intricate, eerie book leaves the reader with more questions than answers, the kind of uncanny questions that reverberate in your mind with a tinny echo of reality . . . Ghost Music shows us how we might find the trigger that wakes us up, forces us to confront our demons, and helps us heal."--Washington Independent Review of Books

"Juxtaposing unreal imagery and distinctive prose with very human characters, Ghost Music is a novel about learning to cope with lost dreams and missed opportunities."--Foreword Reviews

"Talking mushrooms, classical music, and the complexities of identity infuse a semisurreal novel that contrasts the immediacy of daily life in Beijing with a mesmerizing dreamscape . . . A mood of yearning and a search for emotional freedom drive this simply told yet enigmatic story that includes bursts of imaginative flare, often lit by an orange glow. Intimate, melancholic, unresolved--perhaps frustratingly so for some readers--yet hopeful, Yu's story offers a restless female perspective working toward clarity. Dreamy and questioning, an unsettling novel composed of wistful notes."--Kirkus Reviews

"Replete with dreamlike sequences, enclosed walls, and talking mushroom . . . Those who enjoyed Yu's previous work or surrealistic fiction like Hiroko Oyamada's The Hole will likely welcome her latest offering."--Library Journal

"Ethereal . . . Beautifully metaphoric and insightful . . . Yu's lyrical language and atmospheric descriptions bring out the contrast between Song Yan's oppressive, superficial reality and the hypnotic world where she converses with fungi. Fans of literary novels with a supernatural edge, such as Jamie Ford's The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, take note."--BookPage

"This novel of grief, survival, and artistic ambitions captures the uncanny despair of loneliness and the liberating effort of beginning a new life."--Isle McElroy, Vulture

"A melancholic, mysterious exploration of a young Beijing pianist grappling with family secrets, a distant husband and the meaning of music and expression . . . [Song Yan] remains an intriguing hero in her restrained, calm acceptance of her lot."--Observer (UK)

"Beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery . . . intensely evokes its protagonist's alienation."--New Statesman (UK)

"Yu mesmerizes with this surreal story of music and mushrooms . . . As Song Yan relentlessly surges toward independence and away from solitude and loneliness, Yu's blistering narrative reaches a plaintive end. Readers will be enthralled."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An atmospheric study in disconnected relationships . . . In order to live, prodded by talking mushrooms, [an] elusive prodigy, and finally, the music, Song Yan will need to escape her stifling existence. Yu delivers another intimate, intricate performance."--Booklist

"A frustrated piano teacher gains some much-needed clarity and perspective in An Yu's novel Ghost Music . . . Juxtaposing unreal imagery and distinctive prose with very human characters, Ghost Music is a novel about learning to cope with lost dreams and missed opportunities."--Foreword Reviews

"Often stunning. [Yu's] turns of phrase are simple yet wonderful . . . Mixes the real and the surreal, blurring dreamworlds and the everyday . . . Transporting, searching, and poetic, Yu's weird, mutated storytelling wonderfully marries mundane and deep existential dilemmas."--The List (UK)

"An Yu's lush, delicate novel Ghost Music unfolds like Claude Debussy's atmospheric piece for solo piano Rêverie, lulling the reader into protagonist Song Yan's surrealistic daydream of a life. As the former pianist and young wife confronts the stark reality of her marriage with suppressed but deeply felt emotions, she begins to test the limits of her freedom and finds that like the mysterious mushrooms that appear in the mail and in her dreams, she, too, may thrive in darkness."--Chris Cander, USA Today-bestselling author of The Weight of a Piano

"Enthralling and elegant, Ghost Music conjures a world I have never seen before: dreamlike, mysterious, suspenseful in the secrets it reveals, while always being grounded in the sensory. The narrator's wise sensibility drew me in, but I stayed for the sentences--each one more astonishing than the next, they revealed an extraordinary depth of feeling. Like a Ryuichi Sakamoto composition, this novel casts a haunting spell."--Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair

"Dreamlike and diurnal, haunted and lucid, ambivalent and hopeful, An Yu's Ghost Music pulses with profound mystery. A disquieting, mesmerizing novel."--Sara Freeman, author of Tides

"To read Ghost Music's spare prose is to discover its cogency. Yu allows our quiet manias to grow apace with her staggering imagination. An Yu's second novel affirms her as one of our most important writers."--Zain Khalid, author of Brother Alive

Praise for Braised Pork:

"Produces its own kind of mind trip . . . Written with a shimmering lightness that maintains, as Jia Jia thinks of her watery visions, 'some balance between mystery and simplicity' . . . An also tucks a touching love story into the strange proceedings, which supplies enough incentive to keep Jia Jia--and the reader--equally invested in boring old reality."--Wall Street Journal

"An original and electric narrative . . . Yu's language is sparse yet surreal . . . In Braised Pork, Yu raises provocative questions about why we get fixated on those moments--and how they might relate to the company we crave."--TIME, "New Books You Should Read"

"Braised Pork's central journey is interior: the incremental and circuitous process of a human mind trying to come to terms with itself . . . A haunting, coolly written novel . . . Intensely atmospheric."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"Yu's prose is crisp and never tedious, with bursts of startling imagery amid the otherwise restrained style."--New York Times Book Review

"A startlingly original debut . . . While it's easy to see that Braised Pork borrows something of Haruki Murakami's brand of strange melancholia, there's a startlingly original imagination of its own at work here . . . A sensitive portrait of alienated young womanhood."--Guardian

"Dreamy and surreal . . . What follows is her journey of rediscovery--of her passion, of her spirituality, of her artistic abilities, and of herself--that evolves in her real life and in dreams. It's otherworldly and deeply moving."--BuzzFeed

"In searching for answers to her husband's untimely death, a young widow in Beijing finds room to explore her own existential angst . . . Yu's original debut spins an increasingly surreal tale which brilliantly mirrors Jia Jia's own discombobulation . . . Proof positive that rebirths are entirely possible--even in one lifetime."--Kirkus Reviews

"An's poignant debut tells the story of a young woman trying to find purpose in her life in the wake of disorienting personal tragedy . . . An draws Jia Jia with great affection and sympathy as the character grapples with the elusive meaning of her dreams and powerful emotional experiences. Readers will be moved by An's mature meditation on the often inexplicable forces that shape the trajectory of an individual life."--Publishers Weekly

"Poignant . . . A moving, magical parable about a young woman's journey of self-discovery and empowerment . . . Enchanting."--Shelf Awareness

"The premise itself is intriguing enough, but the real magic is in watching Jia Jia stretch her limbs as she leaves behind a rather restrictive marriage and encounters places and people she never imagined. Come for the mystery, stay for self-discovery of a liberated woman."--Literary Hub

"Bold yet understated, Braised Pork is the debut of a supremely confident and gifted writer."--Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation

"This exquisite novel is many things: a detective story in which the real object of pursuit is how one makes meaning of a sometimes ineffable existence; a meditation on the talismanic power of art and the indefatigability of the human spirit; and a many-faceted, perfectly cut gem of psychological portraiture set in well-wrought sentences burnished to a gorgeous luster. The emotions in this book keep pace with you, shadowing you with a quiet intensity, until in the last stretch they overtake you completely."--Matthew Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

"Yu is a fantastic storyteller. The prose is sly and controlled, yet page after page, I found myself spellbound by a story that does what all writers hope to do, which is to make the familiar unfamiliar."--Weike Wang, author of Chemistry

"What a singular, slippery, transfixing novel this is. An Yu achieves a hypnotizing emotional clarity as she takes her narrator ever further from a stifling life in Beijing into a watery realm unlike any I've read before."--Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew

"Braised Pork is mesmerizing, incisive, and utterly disarming. An Yu writes beautifully about loneliness, the experience of isolation--from others, from one's own past--and the possibility of human connection, however fragile."--Rosie Price, author of What Red Was

"What a voice An Yu unfurls in Braised Pork. So elegant and poised, so tuned to the great mysteries of love and loss. Like a breeze on a still day, hers is a sound I didn't know I needed until I felt it. Braised Pork is a major debut."--John Freeman

About the Author

AN YU is the author of Braised Pork. She was born and raised in Beijing and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York City. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English and lives in Hong Kong.