Being trapped in a small apartment with one's mother-in-law would be 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.

I really wanted to love "Ghost Music" by An Yu. The writing is gorgeous and the author creates a haunting atmosphere with her words. Unfortunately, however, the writing was not enough to salvage this book for me. I just couldn't connect with the story and found myself not caring about the characters or what was happening to them. Perhaps there is some deeper meaning that I missed, but I failed to see the point of the story. I often read literary fiction, but I guess this one just went over my head. There were too many questions than answers at the end of the book for it to feel like a satisfying read.

Thank you NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a great surprise! So quirky, left of center, and beautiful! I highly recommend this book. Who knew you can combine love, heartbreak, music, and mushrooms to create a beautiful story.

I really enjoyed Ghost Music, and read along as I listened to the audiobook. This book is what I call "delightfully weird." I liked the main character's exploration of her role in her marriage, who is she as an artist and as a person in general, and the dissociative episodes where she is surrounded by mushrooms. I liked the storyline of the mysterious Bai Yu, and I don't know if I totally "got it," but it gave me pause over what was real and what was in the main character's head. There were overarching themes of grief, keeping secrets, and motherhood. It was a very enjoyable read, I would read this author again.

A quiet and pondering story about a woman who gets sent mysterious boxes of mushroom + her finding her passion for music again, or actually just finding herself again.

Does Song Yan really know her husband? Does she really know herself? These two questions define the narrative of Ghost Music. Author An Yu then utilizes magical realism to answer these questions to delightful effect. The talking mushrooms and a spectral music mentor gradually nudge Song Yan to rediscover the individuality that she hadn't realized she'd left behind as soon as her marriage began.

This was my first read by An Yu and I'm now eager to check out her other book, Braised Pork. Yu has a beautiful, sincere authorial voice that left me wanting more. Here are two of my favorite quotes from Ghost Music to (hopefully) demonstrate what I mean:

"...the heart is not a magical armour that can withstand anything; it is real and beating and capable of being wounded. Sometimes it can be as hard as a diamond and other times as frail as rice paper. I felt mine tear."

"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."

Thank you to netgalley for the arc.
3.5 stars - The story started out really strong, and I wish the rest of the book had more of the beginning in it.
I enjoyed the writing style, but feel like I missed the point of the story.

This story gives one a sense of what it means to be lonely. The narrator is a lonely wife and daughter in law who is trying to find her place in the world. One feels that she was meant to play the piano and is trying to find that musical love again. The bit of magical realism adds a bit of mystery to the plot. One could appreciate the feelings portrayed throughout the novel as the language makes the message clear. I slowly became vested in the characters and saw that they grew and told us some of their secrets as the story unfolded. I do wish I had learned a bit more about the past in order to explain the current status of the relationships in the book.

What can I say about this novel? I was enraptured by it.
Ghost Music is such a wonderful display of grief. I cannot even begin to explain it beyond that.
I believe that if you want to take a look at how grief is so complex and challenging and different for each person, then read this book.
The only reason I am not rating this as 5 Star is because I felt that the novel ended so abruptly. I found myself jabbing my finger at the screen waiting for the next page that never came. It is my own form of grief now.
Thank you An Yu, NetGalley, and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read this haunting eARC for my honest review.
Ghost Music by An Yu releases January 10, 2023!

3 stars
A philosophical, melancholy tale of disappointment in a lost career, distant husband, and cliche mother-in-law. Song Tan needs companionship and music to sustain her life, she struggles with both. Her young students give her some hope in coming to terms with her own musical life but it is not enough.
Mushrooms, music, struggle, real-life, dreams, all too confusing for me. The angst the main character felt was palpable but I could not reach her. It is a sad book that did not make me want to pick it up for a few quick pages during the day.
Although some of the phrases were surprisingly beautiful ('They were kites tied to this world by a string.'), this book made me sad. There was certainly depth for those who wanted to delve, but the effort required wading through ambiguity, and characters that were also searching for their own understanding. Too much work for me. I cannot think of a single person in my reading circle that I could recommend this to. And that is never a good sign.
"Most people concerned themselves with what brought them joy, whether romantic, professional or familial but I concerned myself entirely with avoiding shame.'
Well-written words but words that did not inspire. Do not recommend for anyone suffering from soul-searching or depression.
Thank you #NetGalley for this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

An Yu provides another surrealist novel with an unhappy married couple that doesn't quite see eye to eye, more food metaphors, and weird vibes. I really enjoyed her debut novel, but I have to say that I don't think this one was as successful despite all of the similar elements. This novel felt a bit like a balloon floating on a string, it would sway one way and then the next, but nothing really amounted to anything until the end when it just rose up and vanished into the sky. So, I guess I would say that the ending wasn't satisfying. Every time I thought I understood what was going on, where it was going, the metaphors, it would veer off in a different direction. However, as I said, no matter what direction it went it never really became anything.

It sounds like I disliked it, but I didn't. It was quick and easy to read. I found the surrealist elements interesting and the writing beautiful. But I'm not sure that it was enough to make this a book that I would readily recommend to most people.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this novel, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

"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."

The surrealism of this type of storytelling is in a league of it's own.

This was my first time reading An Yu and I enjoyed the experience. It’s the type of taut, strange little book packed with subtext that really captures my attention. There is a lot of symbolism packed into 240 pages, particularly in the form of music and mushrooms. It’s an interesting exploration of how art, rather than enriching the lives of its protagonists, makes their lives appear hollow as they pursue transcendence that is out of reach. Song Yan has spent most of her life appealing to the whims of men - first pursuing a music career to fulfil her father’s dreams, and then giving that up for her husband. But it’s not entirely clear what she really wants, and the opacity of her character is something I found very interesting. This type of sparse writing style is not my favourite, but I generally found the novel thought-provoking and rich in ideas.

Just an absolutely gorgeous, meditative work of fiction, pulling at the naturalistic strings and encouraging one to lean forward, lean closer, towards the earth.

To start, I did really enjoy the surreal nature of this story. I felt just as bewildered as Song Yan as she shifted between walking and dreaming, to the point that they blend together and you are never sure if she is dreaming or hallucinating in her grief.

Song Yan's overall story is one of grief, with the loss of her chances of having a career as a concert pianist, the tensions between her and her mother in law, and the denial of parenthood from her husband Bowen only to discover he had a previous wife and child he abandoned. She manages to hold on due to her visits to Bai Yu, a former piano prodigy and successful concert pianist who mysteriously disappears 10 years prior.

Overall, i felt sympathetic to all the characters, but felt a bit frustrated with the direction the story went. This could be my own fault for having certain expectations, but i went in expecting more of an analysis of the relationship between Song Yan and her mother in law. What the story is instead is Song Yan struggling to know what she wants in life and feeling isolated. I felt frustrated that her response to every confrontation is to run away. This never really gets resolved all that much. I was also annoyed she kept blowing off her lessons with students, which is minor but bothered me.

It's an alright book. I wasn't exactly impressed and wasn't itching to continue my reading during down times.

I really liked this book. An Yu's writing is superb. I adored the way she describes emotions as similar to weather as if the connection with nature is what matters the most. Now, this story is about what we left behind in order to become what we are and then realizing we had already lost ourselves in what we thought was our purpose. Brilliant.
The mushrooms part of the story is so eerie yet so intriguing, the mushroom-like thing wants to be remembered as everyone wants at some point in life, just as Bai Yu and Song Yan, then realizes that isn't something everyone gets to achieve.
This was really good.

Got absorbed into this story of loss of self, isolation, and realization. The ending wasn't my favorite, but I just sped through this wonderful novel!

Ghost Music was an absolute delight - and I can’t even figure out exactly why I love it so much.
I was completely swept up in the protagonist’s story, the writing was lovely, and yet I feel like there is so much more that was wonderful and I can’t put into words.

It's a challenge to review a slender novel where the magic mushrooms are the most interesting things. An Yu's fans will welcome this, which is more grounded, I think, than Braised Pork, but I found that it wandered aimlessly. I know there are theses of grief, feminism, and loss but I never connected. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

An astounding follow up to her debut, An Yu's Ghost Music straddles once more the line between dreaming and memory, as her characters pass through shifting, manifold states. Her prose is spare, but all this means is that no line is wasted, no word misplaced. Wonderful..