I liked this book so much that I really rooted for it to be chosen for the longlist of the Women’s Prize for fiction this year. Sadly, it was not chosen but I do think that this book needs to find its audience.

We are following Song Yan, a music teacher that feels like she is at a crossroad in her life. She herself does not see that as clearly as the reader and we see her go through an unidentified mental instability. Her husband is working, not seeming to interact with her apart from the basics of routine married life and most of the times, not even that. Her mother in law has come to live with them because she is feeling unwell.

Song Yan goes deeper into a sort of crisis one could say. As the story progresses, we cannot tell what is real and what is not. Is it magical realism? Is it hallucinations? Is it just a cry for help?

I absolutely loved the writing and the pacing was exceptionally well done which is so incredibly important especially for slower paced, character driven stories like this one. The mushroom theme that was an overarching mechanism for ‘Ghost Music’ was so weird, and at times it made you feel like you were spacing out as the main character did.

Tropes of loneliness, dysfunctional families, lack of connection and communication with an essence of music, piano and mushrooms.

This book is not for everyone, I do not think. But it is an author I will keep an eye on and will gladly look up her other published book called ‘Braised Pork’.

Thank you to Netgalley Grove Atlantic for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ghost Music by An Yu is a haunting and beautifully written novel. The story follows the journey of Song Yan, a young woman living in Beijing, as she grapples with the revelations about her husband’s past and the arrival of her mother-in-law, who has come to live with them. Throughout the narrative, Song Yan embarks on a surreal and transformative journey of self-discovery; she also begins to work through her grief for the life and career she’s left behind. Along the way, she becomes obsessed with a strange and mysterious mushroom, which serves as a powerful symbol of her own metamorphosis. Song Yan's past as a classical pianist and the revelations about her dead husband's secrets are intricately woven into the narrative, as she confronts the past and discovers her own creative voice. An Yu's prose is poetic and evocative, painting vivid images of both the mundane and the fantastical, including the surreal landscapes that populate Song Yan's dreams and hallucinations. The novel's exploration of the intersection between myth, music, and reality is both thought-provoking and deeply moving, making Ghost Music a stunning work of literary fiction that is not to be missed.

This book wasn't for me personally. I like the concept and the plot is interesting but I kind of got lost in the writing. I also couldn't get into the protagonist- it just seemed a little detached to me. I can see other people loving this book but for me it wasn't enjoyable.

This story obviously came from a very personal and emotional place. I felt the passion through the words, the truth of what the author was trying to portray.
Even so, I found it more contemplative and vague than I usually enjoy. Additionally it was difficult for me to relate to most of the characters struggles and emotions.
This author definitely has potential.

Song Yan wakes to find a talking mushroom in her room. The mushroom says it is actually a ghost, but manifesting as a mushroom.
The following day, a delivery of mushrooms arrive.. and continue to be delivered each week for many weeks.
As Song Yan tries to uncover the mysteries of the mushrooms, she also discovers more about her husband, mother-in-law and herself.

It is an unsuual book with a magical realism component, but I found the themes powerful. It is a story about grief and how it impacts in different ways. It is also a story about expectations - as a wife, expectations to be a mother and have a certain job - and how that can make us lose our own way.

As Song Yan says, "I can't help but think, if I can already watch each day of my life play out like an old recording, am I still alive?"

Source 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.

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:

<blockquote>“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.</blockquote>

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.

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

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.

"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."

4/5 🍄
TW: death, suicide

Absence becomes a presence that demands to be felt in #GhostMusic by #AnYu. The protagonist, Song Yan, having traded a musical career for a life of domesticity is confronted with the loneliness of living in a congested city when traces of old lives resurface.

When we think of identity formation, we often leave past selves in the past because that is where we feel they belong. Ghost Music challenges this - showing how past identities continue to mold us, and how the refusal to acknowledge them can result in stagnation.

The texture of An Yu’s prose is dreamy, and like mushrooms - with their earthy richness - occupy a space between the carnal and the natural. Nothing is explicit and questions remain, but that is exactly what makes this novel unique.

For me, playing the piano brings back sad memories and while I don’t think I can ever play the same way again, music cracked something open - as I believe it did for Bai Yu and Song Yan. With a little light and rain, maybe something will grow again.

Thank you @netgalley and @groveatlantic for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. Ghost Music was published on 10 January 2023, so head down to your favourite bookshop to check it out.

Finished this book in one go... there is a charm behind these chapters that seem unrelated. Additionally, it is beautifully written. Lastly, some Chinese culture and characteristic are well presented in this novel.

4.5/5.0 will recommend if you like surreal tones.

I wish I could read this book for the first time again. What an evocative and magical story this was. The writing was pure perfection and the story itself was all-consuming. The characters felt so real, despite the fact that some of them were wholly unlikable, and their development felt organic. A wonderful read, full of nuance and emotion. Highly recommended.

This book was really good. It was extremely well written and I enjoyed reading it. Thank you for the arc!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review~

Ghost Music by An Yu follows our FMC, Song Yan. Song Yan used to be a pianist, but after getting married she decides to give up on her dream. She still teaches children how to play piano in order to keep her passion alive.

Her and her husband, Bowen, have been together for three years and she's been trying again and again to get him to have a child with her. Tensions grow even further when her mother-in-law moves in and starts passive aggressively asking why she has no grandchildren. As time goes on, she starts having nightmares of a room with no doors and a magic talking mushroom. Later a parcel arrives, not addressed to Song Yan, she wants to return them, Her mother-in-law has other plans when she sees it's full of mushrooms from her home providence of Yunnan. They start bonding as they cook the mushrooms together. Then, one day, the mushrooms stop coming. In their place is a letter from the sender, the mysterious pianist, Bai Yu, thought to have disappeared from the world forever.

Wow was this such a wonderful read! I absolutely loved watching Song Yan learn that sometimes it's better to be on your own than with someone that won't give you want you need. I really feel for her when she's continuously pestered my her MIL about having children, as if she hadn't already been trying. Her feelings towards performing and playing the piano very much remind me of Your Lie in April, how easily you can be pulled from something you love because of the pressure. The writing was beautiful and I loved the little anecdote of magical realism. The whole situation with Bai Yu really had me choking up at the end.

I very much enjoyed this story and cannot wait to read An Yu's other works!

Song Yan is trying her best to please her busy, rather indifferent, all-about-himself business executive husband, and her pining-about-many-things mother-in-law, while balancing her career as a pianist teaching and sometimes performing. Constant care of young students is an ever-present reminder of her childlessness. Stress overwhelms her often at night. She is filled with doubt and second-guessing. And there, in the middle of world-renowned Beijing, her dreams concoct the most astonishing advocate she could imagine: a soft-spoken orange fleshed mushroom, filled with wisdom and flanked by attendant siblings. Daytime glimpses of there-again, gone-again orange flashes prove distracting and concerning.

Soon packages of mushrooms are anonymously sent on a regular basis, ready for use in scrumptious recipes helping to soothe Song Yan's relationship with her mother-in-law. Still, all is not well. Adding to the dreaminess of her story, DeBussy's Reverie plays on, poignant and evocative, pointing Song Yan in an entirely different direction.

A Sincere Thank You to An Yu, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review. #GhostMusic #NetGalley

I loved this book. In this dreamlike novel the main character Song Yan discovers her straightforward safe life is not at all what it seems. The writing is ethereal and dreamlike, there is some magical realism, and you can almost hear the music when Song Yan plays the piano.

The author of the well-received Braised Pork, returns to the theme of loneliness within a close relationship with her new novel, Ghost Music.

Song Yan lives in Beijing with her husband, Bowen, a workaholic car company executive. The couple barely know each other, and Song Yan feels increasingly estranged from the man she’s supposed to love. Song Yan is filled with emptiness, a feeling exacerbated by her desire to have a child and her husband’s refusal to have one, as well as his emotional and often physical absence. When her mother-in-law moves in with the couple, she adds to their already strained relationship—even more so when she badgers Soon Yan about her childlessness and inability to do "anything a married woman should be doing."

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/ghost-music-an-yu/

First, thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. Now onto the good stuff!

I... loved this book. I found the world comfortable to inhabit, it wasn't overly long or long-winded, it was weird and delightful, and I really enjoyed Song Yan and her point of view. I absolutely devoured it in one sitting, and I will be rereading this one. The atmosphere? Wonderful. Descriptions? Just right. This book is an exercise in Perfect For Me. If you enjoy slightly weird books about marriage crises, personal identity, lost or abandoned dreams, and a main character's interest in mushrooms, this is the book for you.

5/5

This remarkable melancholy novel is set in Beijing. The protagonist is a piano in a state of crisis after issues arise in her marriage. Mushrooms play an integral part in the novel, both as real fungi and in surreal dreams.. a novel of grief and loss, the beautiful writing makes it an interesting read and not as depressing as this review would seem to indicate.

What an eerie, quietly beautiful book with just the right touch of surrealism. Ghost Music is about Song Yan, a woman who has given up her dreams of being a concert pianist and is stuck in a marriage with a husband who is barely there and seemingly unknowable. When her mother-in-law moves in and they begin receiving mysterious mushroom packages, things hit a head, and begin to unravel. Her husband, Bowen’s, secrets begin to consume her and as she searches for meaning and truth, she encounters more and more strange and inexplicable things.

I just adored this book. I loved the pace, the weird tension and how things were revealed. I loved what the author had to say about the book in an interview as well: “I am immensely drawn to the secrecy of mushrooms. They live and thrive in the dark…Ghost Music is a story filled with secrets. There are things that happen that seem like coincidences, but you get the feeling that they are connected in some subtle, fateful way, as though they were always meant to happen in that manner. Things go on under the surface of these characters’ lives until they come out of nowhere and take over completely. A little like a mycelium, don’t you think?” (Dec 7 2022, Hindustan Times)

I think watching The Last of Us during the same week I listened to the audiobook just added to the overall vibe. Also, the narration! So good!

Highly recommend, I think I’ll be talking about and ruminating on this one for a long time.

Ghost Music by An Yu

Also thank you to @netgalley and @groveatlantic for the arc, I read and listened to this one.

2.75 stars

I will start off by saying I loved the descriptive prose of this story even if at times they did start to feel a little much for the scene. The descriptions of music and the appreciation of music were beautiful.

I enjoyed the actual physical reading of this book however each time I would stop to find myself pondering what I had just read and not finding much substance plot wise.

At the beginning of the story we are given multiple possibilities of where the story could go - is this a story about Song Yan finally achieving her dream as a pianist? No. Is this a story of a women leaving a marriage devoid of communication or feeling and learning to be comfortable in her own skin? No. Is this a thrilling story about a famous missing pianist and a mysterious box of mushrooms and how Song Yan helps find said pianist and bring him back to fame or vide versa? …. No. …. So what was the plot actually about? I found it disappointing that each time I would think ‘ohhh the plot is picking up?’ Suddenly that line of plot would fizzle out and there would be another in its place. Maybe this was exactly what the author and story were going for but it didn’t work for me as a reader.

Leading on from this I’m new to the genre of magical realism but seriously WHAT WAS UP WITH THE TALKING MUSHROOMS?! This was such an intriguing part to the story and it was incredibly frustrating as a reader to get no more of an explanation then “I’m kind of a ghost but not really” are they symbolic? are they even real?
The ending really threw me - nothing was resolved, no discoveries about the mushrooms are made. It feels like we’re right back at square one again which after sticking with this character for the whole story is incredibly disheartening. She’s back to looking after her mother in law, her husband is back to work and traveling and making decisions without her, and she’s still seeing mushrooms.

Three stars for gorgeous prose about music, interesting characters, not being a DNF, and not much else unfortunately.

Thank you to NetGalley and ‘name of publisher here’ for gifting me this ARC in return for my honest review.

I did not like or should I say understand this book at all. Need lees to say I do not have much to say about it. Took me way too long to read. Actually, seemed a waste of my time.

This was a highly anticipated book for me as I really enjoyed braised pork her previous book. And it did not dissapoint. It was well written, I really enjoyed the eery vibes this had. Perfectly weird book