My introduction to Ruyan Meng’s work came via her novel The Morgue Keeper, which follows a man named Qing Yuan — the titular morgue keeper — who becomes fixated on one of the bodies that he encounters. (Literary Hub recently published an excerpt.) Soon enough, his interest in this case (which reminded me a bit of Derek Raymond’s harrowing I Was Dora Suarez) takes him to increasingly unsettling places. I spoke with Meng about this novel’s origins and the moments in history that she seeks to chronicle.
The Morgue Keeper has two chief elements for me: Qing Yuan’s growing obsession with the murdered woman who shows up in the morgue and the acceleration of the most oppressive aspects of the Cultural Revolution. Did you always envision these two being part of the same story, or did one element come first?
I started with Qing Yuan, working alone in the morgue. But no sooner had I placed him there than the body of a nameless young woman appeared. Her death was unexplained, and her condition was so horrifying that it unsettled Qing Yuan in a way he couldn’t ignore. Morgue keepers at that time, by the way, named bodies after the mortuary cabinet number they were stored in—hence her “name,” #19. His refusal to treat her as merely a number, though, naturally became the emotional engine of the book, and I knew the story would have to revolve around the questions her appearance provoked, as well as around Qing Yuan’s obsession to find the truth about her, against all odds. So really the mystery and the character grew together. Qing Yuan didn’t go searching for a mystery. The mystery found him, and I just sort of tagged along.
Your previous book, Only the Cat Knows, is also set in the second half of the 20th century. What draws you as a writer to these points in history?
China at that time was ruled by Mao Zedong, under whom the country experienced a series of large-scale political movements and social upheavals. The 1940s through the 1970s was a period of extreme instability. After years of chaos, poverty, and famine, millions of ordinary people died, and just about everyone lived in constant fear and despair. As a writer, I’m interested less in political narratives per se than in how extreme political moments permeate everyday life—how they shape what people can say, whom they can trust, how they love, how they survive. These overwhelming times bore into the smallest and most seemingly insignificant human moments. Silence acquires immense weight. Kindness becomes risky. Memory becomes something so fragile that lacking real vigilance it can easily simply atomize. The sorts of historical settings I create aren’t to explain history itself so much as to understand how people endure extreme hostility and still preserve their tenderness, dignity, and moral clarity—in other words, their basic humanity.
Are cats something of a motif in your work?
Under Mao pets were largely forbidden in cities, and, believe it or not, during the Four Pests Campaign even birds were systematically exterminated. For reasons no one could fully explain, stray cats still appeared in the streets. Cats, weirdly, were almost the only creatures that remained both visible and free. It hasn’t been an intentional decision, but they have become a natural presence in my stories. They’re symbols of a fragile persistence when tenderness has very little room to exist. They’re the silent witnesses. They are the survivors.
There’s a subtle element of plotting present in The Morgue Keeper, in that it turns out that Qing Yuan has a very good reason for his particular career. In a novel like this, how do you decide what aspects to reveal up front and which to hold for dramatic effect?
After what happened to his family, Qing Yuan was conscripted by the government to work as a morgue keeper. He had no choice. The plot, in my opinion, was better served by marrying it to the gradual unfolding of his experience as he comes to understand the world he’s trapped in, and of course, as well, to his ever-evolving inner life. The novel on the whole is dominated by silence, fear, pressure, despair, and the like, and Qing Yuan’s comprehension develops and matures in sync with his constantly shifting circumstances. Revealing too much too soon would have undermined the subtle but very tense rhythms of his daily life. Dramatic effect, for me, isn’t about surprise. It’s about recognition. The truth about Qing Yuan’s personal history doesn’t crystallize at all once but slowly, in a way that feels both inevitable and earned. I wanted the revelations in this story to mirror how people suffer oppressive systems, surviving one moment at a time, enduring things gradually, until they are inescapably confronted by the full magnitude of their circumstances.
In the novel’s acknowledgements, you mention D. Foy’s work as editor for this novel. What was the working relationship like there? How much did The Morgue Keeper evolve over the course of your time working together?
Working with D was a deeply collaborative and supportive experience. We would FaceTime periodically to discuss specific challenges or questions about the manuscript, and those conversations were invaluable in helping me to think more clearly about the story. D offered his advice with care and precision, and he often reminded me to “trust your story,” by which he meant to say, I think, that I should have confidence both in my abilities as a writer and in the deep power of the narrative proper. From the beginning, he has believed in the importance of The Morgue Keeper, not merely as a historical narrative but as a story that will resonate with readers in our current moment. Over time, the novel evolved in its subtlety, pacing, and emotional depth, but always under the guidance of his encouragement and trust. His support really gave me the space to explore and to deepen Qing Yuan’s moral interior while at the same time maintaining the story’s vision.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on another book also set during the Cultural Revolution. As I hinted at earlier, it’s still the period I feel most compelled by. There are just so many questions from that era that I feel called to explore.