[MPOV] Ghost Music

My rating: 3/5

Goodreads rating: 3.73/5
Publish: January 10th, 2023
Author: An Yu
Genre: contemporary fiction

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.

I am thankful to be given this opportunity to read and review this e-ARC. The first thing that attracted me to this was the cover, the exceptionally cute mushrooms over lines like music notes! Yes, I'm the kind who looks for books based on covers first then the content LOL! 

"The one thing more important than playing the piano is listening to yourself play."

This is also my first time reading An Yu's novel and I am surprised that it is well written. It is straightforward, easy to understand and I was able to grasp the story being told. However I did find it a little monotonous across that I was finding it hard to absorb the plots and finishing the book. Luckily it was not a door stopper so I could pushed myself to complete it. 

''I tried to identify something that I couldn't even describe myself; and abstract thing that I wasn't quite sure existed. The sound of being alive, as Bai Yu put it.''

Ghost Music is set in modern day China about a piano teacher who started having family issue when her mother in law moved in with them in Beijing. Her mother in law misses Yunnan a lot and wished to go back there. In the meantime, she has also been pestering for her son and daughter in law to have children. Upon the arrival of the anonymous mushroom gifts, their lives begin to change. The piano teacher's obsession with the anonymous mushroom gifter, Bai Yu, had her seeing her life in a different light.

As the story slowly unravels, I begin to understand the complexity of it. It is referencing life in general and we should move forward instead of being boxed up aka thinking out of the box, for example. I'm sure we may have different opinions upon reading it and interpreting the in-depth meaning of this novel differently. It truly had me thinking of my life at some point.

"He made me see the simple fact that we are not tied down to this world; we are in pursuit of it. That is how I loved him."

I enjoyed the overall meaning of the story and the simple way it is told but I did wished for it to be a little more upbeat. As I've read it on different occasions during my commute, it wasn't as dry luckily. I don't read as many genre like this so if you happened to like Haruki Murakami's books, minus the satirical ending, this might be something you can expand on. I might look up Braised Pork when time permits :-)