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There are currently 31 member reviews
for The Funeral Cryer
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Maryanne H. (Delmar, NY)
Death, for a Living
The first person narrator of THE FUNERAL CRYER by Wenyan Lu is both a fully-developed denizen of a rural village in northeast China in real time and Everywoman. As a professional mourner at funerals, she needs to summarize and evaluate the lives of the deceased and lead the mourners through the process of witnessing, grieving, and reengaging, moving forward with their own lives, that is, the cycle from sorrow to joy. Her work, with unique access to the stories and secrets of local residents, forces her to consider the big questions of life's ultimate meaning and apply these lessons to her own life. It also makes her an outcast in her community, a spokeswoman and harbinger of death, an authentic voice, a nameless witness to the fragility of life.
Add in the fact that the funeral cryer and the unemployed "husband" began their married life as a comedy duo, for some sense of the novel's irony and complexity. As an entertainment, this book is not for everyone but it would lend itself to vigorous book club discussion.
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Barbara B. (Harlingen, TX)
The Funeral Cryer
In The Funeral Cryer no one has a name, just an occupation.The middle age woman telling her story is a paid professional hired to cry and sing at funerals in her Chinese village. I suffered with her as she struggled questions "who am I":, "does anyone love me". Though she found some answers nothing changed in her life. We were both saddened that her journey ended just as it began.
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Gaye R. (Coupeville, WA)
The Musings of a Middle-aged Woman
Although the setting for this book is China and there are definitely cultural differences, the pondering and processing of the unnamed woman could be the thoughts of any 21st century woman. As she receives little emotional support from her family, especially her husband who is verbally abusive, in her mind she questions everything about her life. She questions her sexuality, her body image, her worth, her parenting, her marriage, her role as a daughter and sister as well as the mundane parts of life like, shopping, cooking and gardening. The backdrop for all her musings is her job as a Funeral Cryer, where she shows honor and respect for those who have died through her honest and sincere grieving.
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Vivian H
Ordinary Life in Rural China
The Funeral Cryer is an interesting study of uneducated people living in villages in rural China where the old ways remain amid modern technology such as mobile phones.
I am appreciative of BookBrowse and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this story about people who lead lives of quiet desperation and lack of many basic needs in a patriarchy where ‘the husband’ reigns supreme, even if lazy, rude and dismissive.
When I lived in Taipei I learned about hired mourners for funerals. The wealthier the decedent, the greater the number of paid mourners during the funeral procession, crying and playing music. Until I read The Funeral Cryer, however, I was not aware the job was considered bad luck or that the job could be so profitable.
I rated the book ‘average’ because the cadence is extremely slow and I found myself skimming pages, even though the story is interesting.
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WDH
Strange But True?
Overall this left me feeling like the story was unfinished. The book is filled with nameless characters who live repressed, unhappy, internal lives with little communication. The main village and surrounding places are named, but the names include land features that don't exist. The husband is awful and the wife basically ignores him. He doesn't work, they've let their fields go to waste instead of farming and she is shunned because of her job as a funeral cryer who helps loved ones of the deceased express their grief. Family members she cries/sings for often confess secrets to her to unburden themselves. She does start to make changes towards the end of the book, but the ending doesn't provide direction about her decisions. The pace feels awkward and stilted, the ending is rather abrupt with a lot of plot lines that felt unfinished, but I am glad I finished reading the book. It was very different.
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Robin
An Appeal Beyond Sadness
This is the story of a woman whose unhappiness sprawls across the page like a blanket. The income she earns as a funeral cryer, as well as the modest pleasure of a job well done, is offset by the loss of friends who withdraw from her because she is tainted by death.
At home, her life with “the husband” is completely unfulfilling. He is dismissive and often verbally abusive. As an additional insult, he refuses to find a job preferring to spend his days playing mah-jongg with his friends.
Her sadness is not relieved by “the daughter” who lives in Shanghai or even occasional interactions with her mother. “Life is so unexciting.” she muses.
A growing relationship with “the barber” who styles her hair before funerals brings her opportunities to wonder about other possibilities. Considering the thirsty bamboo shoots she hopes to harvest after a good rain, she thinks “Then I realized I was the same as the bamboo shoots: I didn’t know what I would like to have, but when I had it, I would know.”
The evolution of the plot shows that she did know what she wanted even though it was as difficult to predict as the rains for which the bamboo shoots waited.
The author chose to introduce most of the characters by their jobs or roles: the husband, the butcher, or the barber. This creates a distance between the reader and the characters which makes it difficult to empathize with them. Nor does an important named character, Hotpot, the butcher’s widow, elicit sympathy from the reader, as she is suspected of having an affair with “the husband.”
The funeral cryer’s life is largely bleak. It’s sometimes difficult to develop an affinity for the characters. Yet, the book might appeal to readers who want to learn about cultures and experiences very different from their own.
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Paula B. (Albuquerque, NM)
A Brief Glimpse of Life in Rural China
Funeral customs and beliefs vary significantly between cultures. A small glimpse of modern funeral customs in rural China is the redeeming part of this novel. The novel, at best, represents this one situation, but within the story, customs and beliefs are rather thoroughly discussed. The overall impression of this middle aged woman's life is that it is joyless, loveless and hopeless. Nothing suggests a better life before or to come. I cannot decide if the blandness of the story, the almost nonexistent plot or a cultural disconnect is responsible for the disheartening overall feeling left by the story. References to weak family connections, little hope for future life comforts, superstition rather than a belief system and no reliance on community or government, makes this reading experience feel more like a manifestation of Orwell's masterpiece novel 1984, than a novel about village life in China. Despite the dismal lives that inhabit this novel, the small glimpses inside rural China may rescue the book for some readers.
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