What do readers think of The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu? Write your own review.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A funeral cryer is paid to cry at funerals, and/or teaches the bereaved to show the proper sorrow regardless of how they feel about the dead. The profession of funeral crying is unique and interesting and the book describes a social emotional culture of China that is not common knowledge. Utilizing a middle age woman who narrates her plight as a funeral cryer, the isolation that the job creates and her suspicion that her husband is seeing another woman Lu has created a quasi soap opera mystery about rural Chinese.

The downside to this novel is the hum drum cadence of the narration, especially in the beginning. While the intent may have been to make the story feel as the narrator might feel, it is reminiscent of reading a first grade chapter book. Coupled with the lack of significant action, continued reading is a chore. Recommended only for those who have time to plod through the pages and enjoy the predictable redemption of the narrator in the end.

I liked finding out about the profession of "funeral cryer", a new idea to me, and the description of life in a rural village in present day China was surprisingly primitive. (Three stars just for the new information).

However, the book as a whole was difficult to enjoy. The unnamed narrator was too passive to even attempt to solve the problems in her marriage and her life. The author introduced multiple plot lines which were never resolved, and the abrupt ending was disappointing.

This book is too dull and depressing for me to recommend it to either of the book clubs I manage.

The narrator cries at funerals in order to support her husband (who does not work and who may or may not be having an affair) and herself. In so doing, she tries to honor the deceased by praising their lives and expressing sorrow at their deaths. In this way, she hopes to add meaning to their lives.

She also searches - and does not find, sadly - meaning in her own life.
It was hard to get into this book. I mean if the narrator doesn't really care if her husband is having an affair, why should I? She brings similar detachment to her other relationships - apparently reserving her emotion for her funeral crying.

I found this to be a sad, unsatisfying read and would not really recommend it.