GHOST MUSIC

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.

Song Yan’s marriage is a lonely one, pinched between the unexpressed expectations of her mother-in-law, who's newly arrived in Beijing, and her husband Bowen’s continual absences for work. She would like to have children, and her mother-in-law is similarly pushing for grandchildren, but Bowen seems reluctant. Meanwhile, Song Yan has her musical pupils to teach and meals to cook, which suddenly include a new ingredient—mushrooms, boxes of them being mysteriously delivered to her door, addressed to a stranger but without a return address. As the daughter of a concert pianist—a career she herself abandoned—Song Yan has lived with music as a constant. And now a letter that arrives from the sender of the mushrooms leads her to another dimension of musicality; the sender turns out to be Bai Yu, her father's favorite pianist, who disappeared from public view at the height of his career. Song Yan finds him living in a curious old home that she visits repeatedly, to play for him and for herself, learning the background to his withdrawal. Simultaneously, she discovers that Bowen has been keeping secrets from her, crucial and tragic hidden facts that contain explanations and more mysteries. Yu’s second novel, after Braised Pork (2020), once again explores an uneasy marriage, melding the magical with the everyday in a wife’s search for escape and truth. 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.