Ghost Music

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

For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. When she married, she gave up on her own career as a concert pianist, but her husband Bowen has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child.

Instead, she must accommodate her mother-in-law, newly arrived from the province of Yunnan and bringing with her buried family secrets. Shortly after, strange parcels show up on the doorstep, Song Yan's dreams become troubling and claustrophobic, and she loses faith even in her teaching.

Striking out alone through the winter city, she finds herself pulled into the ancient hutongs to confront the source, and perhaps the salvation, of her disquiet. In a still room in an ageless, ancient house, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of all the pain and beauty in her life?

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 colour and texture to the promise of new beginnings.