This was beautiful written story. I couldn't put it down. It was tragic, eye opening, and heartbreaking but also talked of hope and human resilience. I don't typically read historical fiction but I'm so glad I was able to read this ARC. This is a book that will stick with you after you read it.

Thank you to NetGalley and 7.13 Books for the ARC!

This review is honest and voluntary

Ruyan Meng’s "The Morgue Keeper" is not a novel for the faint of heart, indeed the novel at its core is an affirmation of the human spirit’s ability to persevere even after everything has been taken, after every imaginable torture and loss has been inflicted, after the world and country one knew has been completely erased. I would be remiss to open this review without a significant content warning. This book portrays the worst of humanity, the lowest depths of depravity, the most unspeakable acts we can commit against each other. Non-exhaustively, this books includes discussion or descriptions of: starvation, torture, violence, sexual assault, suicide, the abuse of animals, and many other sensitive topics. However, it is important to note that none of these descriptions or portrayals are gratuitous. The Morgue Keeper, for all the macabre imagery implied in the title alone, is not a piece of “grimdark” fiction nor does it participate in what is often termed “misery porn”. Instead this novel (which is based on true events), attempts to communicate the desolation experienced by the characters (and by extension the real people they portray) with absolute honesty, without softening the blow or turning its gaze away from their suffering.

Qing Yuan is a morgue keeper in Chairman Mao’s Revolutionary China. In June of 1966, a brutally mutilated body is delivered into his care— unrecognizable as human, still breathing her last breaths. With no name, and no cause of death listed besides “Trauma”, Qing Yuan files her into cabinet #19. From that day #19 haunts the morgue keeper, begging him to discover the cause of her death. What follows is a journey through the depths, illuminated by beautiful, restrained prose and punctuated with flourishes of magical realism and dream-like descriptions.

It is difficult to say that one might “enjoy” reading The Morgue Keeper, but as I flipped through its pages it wasn’t the violence or the horror that struck me most deeply— it was the constant assertions of hope, the never ending search for something to buoy one’s spirit above the water even as each new life-preserver was snatched away or sucked under. I kept reading because I had to know if such hope was possible, if it could be sustained into some kind of conclusion, and I did not come away empty handed.

Thank you Leland Cheuk and NetGalley for the ARC!