Author(s): An Yu

General Fiction

A pianist in Beijing must find a way to the life she really wants, in this atmospheric new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Braised Pork When Song Yan's mother-in-law moves into the apartment she shares with her new husband Bowen, their carefully calibrated life is overturned. Family secrets are uncovered- a disappeared sister, a former wife; family plans are put on hold -- can they possibly try for a child in these circumstances? Trapped and disorientated, Song Yan begins to question whether she knows anything at all about the man she chose to marry. He, in turn, withdraws from her completely. When mysterious parcels of mushrooms begin to arrive on the doorstep, purporting to arrive from a virtuoso pianist, Bai Yu, whom everyone had believed to be dead, Song Yan seizes on the invitation to track him down. So begins a surreal, soul-searching journey into music, pain and truth, set in a wintery Beijing of frozen parks and sudden fires, in which intense emotion is only ever just below the surface. Praise for Braised Pork 'Startlingly original... A portrait of alienated young womanhood as it is set free' Guardian 'Rich and wild...it gets under your skin' Observer 'An Yu writes with style and in a way that is hard to resist' Sunday Times 'A seductive, sharply observed tale of love, loss and hope' Daily Mail

MATILDA BOOKSHOP REVIEW

Song Yan is living in quiet crisis. Once a gifted pianist, she is now listlessly going about the business of being an obedient wife to an increasingly remote husband. This life of passivity and ennui may have been tolerable if it were not for two things; her husband's refusal to give her a child and the increasingly vivid visions she has of mushrooms talking to her.

Ghost Music is a surreal yet tender portrait of a damaged woman and the other troubled persons in her orbit. As her life dissolves into abject chaos, you cannot be quite sure if this fracturing is coming from without or within. I found An Yu's delicate, disturbing rumination on a life half lived to be both moving and terrifying! Emilie