Keywords: Chinese literature, Chinese fiction, death, marriage
Genre: Literary fiction
Length: short medium long
Country: China
Review .
“She was Great-Great-Grandma to everyone in the village. I didn’t know how old she was at the time; we just knew she was alive. I felt a moment of surreptitious excitement and a shameful buzz in my chest since I would earn some money from her timely death.”
The funeral crier | Wen Yan Lu
In a world engulfed in tradition, customs, hierarchy and societal rules, a woman finds herself as the funeral cryer of the village. Mother to a girl who took to Shanghai after blaming her parents for insisting she goes to school, wife to a man too busy playing mah-jong with his friends to actually get a job, she’s the pariah in her community due to her work. People who’ve got to do with the dead bring bad luck, they said.
I found this book a fantastic study, not just of the rural Chinese society and impact of historical events on the common people, but of the inner world of a simple woman who lives her life taking everything in stride. I am struggling to find my words when describing her.
We’re used to main characters showing strength through grand gestures, through doing the impossible, fighting against the world and everyone who dares stay in their way. The funeral cryer, in that aspect, is the weakest. She’s submissive to her husband to a point difficult to understand for a present-day woman and her entire relationship with him is resumed to meals and as little communication as possible. She’s never expressed her identity, never even been bothered to think about herself as having one outside the roles she had to fulfil in her family and village (daughter-wife-funeral cryer). When a certain woman threatens what’s left of her marriage, instead of getting alarmed and confrontational, trying to figure out what was happening, she takes it all in stride, letting life unfold and days go by, what piece of information comes her way come, what doesn’t… remaining undiscovered.
It’s so difficult as a woman reader to make up your mind about this woman. Although you’re witness to her inner thoughts, the level of disconnect between the outer world and her actions, between the changes and decisions and events going on and her exasperating stoic-like attitude, it’s mind-boggling . However, as someone appears in her life, things start to slowly change. And from that point on, I’ll let you discover where things will go.
I wouldn’t say it’s the best book I have ever read, but I will say it’s a book that lingers.
Musings of a reading addict 
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