Ghost Music by An Yu review – the meaning of silence

For the protagonist of Ghost Music, An Yu’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut Braised Pork, life in Beijing with husband Bowen is as predictable “as the phases of the moon”. That is, until Song Yan’s mother-in-law moves in. Along with her luggage, Ma brings “with her everything [Song Yan] didn’t know about Bowen”. Secrets from his past are exposed, including traumas, an ex-wife and a child. Song Yan learns that she never really knew her husband; in turn, home no longer feels like home, and her sense of self deteriorates.

In part, this novel is about grief. Song Yan isn’t grieving for the husband she thought she knew, but for a past version of herself. Before marrying Bowen, she trained as a concert pianist; the life she previously “gave” to the piano, she has “given to him”. This trade of musical performance for domesticity is symbolised in the transition her hands have made: “It wasn’t until we started dating that I learned to cook. I stopped caring about cutting my fingers or burning my hands.” Now Song Yan becomes haunted by the life she could have led – the pianist version of herself. Here is where the “ghost” of the title comes in. Out of the blue, Song Yan receives a letter from Bai Yu, her father’s favourite pianist, presumed dead for years; she starts playing again; and she begins to dream of an orange mushroom that talks to her, and which yearns to listen to Chopin.

The story at the centre of Ghost Music revolves around the struggles of living with an elderly in-law, the collapse of a marriage, and more generally the pressures on women to be doting wives in Chinese society. However, these themes are explored in such an unusual way that it doesn’t read like a domestic novel; throughout there is the uncanny sense of something odd, verging on supernatural, going on in the background. At every turn of the plot, mushrooms are central: there are mysterious deliveries every week from Ma’s home province, which prompt the revelation of secrets from Bowen’s past; an orange dust, possibly fungal spores, settles on the town Bowen’s ex-wife lives in; unidentified mushrooms grow on the walls of the room Bai Yu’s piano is kept in, where the pianist enlists Song Yan in his quest to find “the sound of being alive”. Song Yan has learned that her married life isn’t what it seemed, and now everything else is brought into question, too. The reader is left wondering what is real, and what is dream or hallucination.

A lot is unexplained in Ghost Music, and at times it’s not clear where the novel is going. However, among Yu’s many illuminating descriptions of music, one hints at a central idea. Song Yan describes the moments of silence in a piano performance as “more resonant than the mere absence of sound”, recalling the work of composer and amateur mycologist John Cage (who provides the book’s epigraph: “The more you know them, the less sure you feel about identifying them. Each one is itself. Each mushroom is what it is – its own centre”). Cage considered sound and silence to be of equal importance in music, and Yu applies this to the lives of her characters: Bowen’s silence about his past, Song Yan’s abandonment of her career as a pianist and her absence of purpose in the home all resonate. This is an intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound.

• Claire Kohda’s Woman, Eating is published by Virago. Ghost Music by An Yu is published by Harvill Secker (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.