Ghost Music by An Yu (Grove Press, release date January 2023)

Even before the pandemic came to change the world, every body contained a city of ghosts, one that got rid of dead cells, facilitated the departure of those that were dying, and formed new replacements. Physically we’re all mixtures of what was, what is disappearing, and what is new. Mentally we struggle to reconcile memories of what’s past with the memories we make of a confusing present. In our external environments we’re faced with the same predicament each time we walk outside, working to make sense of death and flux. Seeing how quickly the memories of what once was in place fade away, we’re confronted with the inevitable question: When we’re gone will we be remembered? How can we ensure that we’ll survive in the memories of others?

Song Yan, a young urban housewife, is disturbed one night by a lucid dream, so vivid she can’t find her way out of it. Confronted by a small orange mushroom that has the power of speech, she asks it whether it’s real or a dream and is told “Sometimes these two things are not so different.” 

“I’d like to be remembered,” the mushroom says before it vanishes.

At one time, Soon Yan was once a gifted pianist.  Now she’s a piano teacher, a woman, still young,  who believes she has turned her life over to her husband. It takes a series of mysterious gifts, boxes of fresh mushrooms, to reawaken her curiosity, especially when a letter arrives that reveals the giver. The boxes have been sent by a legend from her past, China’s most famous concert pianist, who disappeared so thoroughly years ago that he’d been given up as dead.

The letter contains Bai Yu’s address and a request that she come to visit. When Song Yan musters enough courage to grant this wish, Bai Yu tells her, “Help me find the sound of being alive.”

Together the two pianists search for what lies within the cave of a musical composition and slowly Song Yan discovers a depth in her life that extends beyond the routine she’s fostered. Then Bai Yu goes away once more and the orange mushroom returns, larger and more invasive than when it first showed itself.

An Yu has written a novel that’s is as haunting and elusive as a musical composition played on a piano. Is Bai Yu dead or alive? For that matter, is Song Yan truly alive after submerging her musical talent in a life over which she has no control? And what the hell is that mushroom and its attending crop of orange fungi that eventually cover an entire room--plus the piano that stands within it?

In a story that’s both eerie and revelatory, dabbling in magic realism and yet firmly rooted on a real street in a real neighborhood in a real city, An Yu posits that to be remembered after death, it’s necessary to live a life of joy and purpose. Song Yan slowly recovers her authentic self in a process that’s both painful and exhilarating, a survival story for our time.~Janet Brown