Song Yan is a gifted pianist who gave up pursuing her own musical career to marry a dedicated businessman and start a family. But her husband Bowen staunchly refuses to have children. At the same time, Bowen's mother has moved into their apartment and frequently nags Song Yan about having children. Caught between these two conflicting opinions, Song Yan longs to become pregnant. She directs her maternal feeling and talent towards children who she instructs to play the piano. As she gradually discovers hidden aspects from Bowen's past she has strange dreams about glowing orange mushrooms. She also connects to a mysterious individual named Bai Yu who was once a child prodigy and star pianist who disappeared many years ago. This is an absorbing novel which explores the psychological tension of a woman wrestling with issues to do with creativity, ambition and belonging. It also blends in surreal elements of talking mushrooms and a whole village which becomes covered with a strange orange pollen. An Yu has a fascinating way of depicting quietly transformative moments in life when we enter into realms of being separate from our ordinary day to day existence.
Mushrooms are something the characters consume but they also take on a symbolic force in the novel as Song Yan dreams about them and tries to tend growing them herself. Perhaps they stand for hidden desires which grow in the dark or the struggle for Song Yan to find purpose in a perilously isolated life. After discovering shocking details about her husband's life she observes “Solitude is tolerable, even enjoyable at times. But when you realise that you've given your life to someone, yet you know nothing but his name? That kind of solitude is loneliness. That's what kills you.” Though her father desired that she become a famous pianist, Song Yan realised there were limits to her talent. The figure of Bai Yu stands as a counterpoint to the celebrated musician she might have become as he renounced his fame to live in seclusion. I think the novel tries to show how fulfilment isn't necessarily found in the larger life goals we set for ourselves but in experiences where we're able to truly express ourselves. It's enjoyable following Song Yan's uneven and dreamlike journey, but there were some elements of the story which felt like they could have been developed more fully such as Bowen's absent sister and the meaning of the orange dust. Overall I appreciated the subtle shifts in her character through strange encounters which lead Song Yan to a new independence.
