The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu

The narrator of Wenyan Lu’s mesmerising novel The Funeral Cryer is a middle-aged woman who lives in a remote Chinese village. She leads the mourning at funerals by eulogising the deceased and piling on emotional pressure until everyone is in tears. Her work is well paid, but because of it she is labelled unlucky and shunned by her neighbours. The plot follows the Cryer’s everyday life, while she analyses her situation with dry humour and seeks a path to contentment.

None of the characters in The Funeral Cryer has a name. The Husband, the Daughter and the Brother all arouse resentment in the Cryer, but she refers to her parents as Mum and Dad. This implies that in her heart she is still their child. The Husband moved in with her family when they married, so according to local tradition he has a low status. He takes this out on the Cryer by calling her stupid, pocketing the money she earns and playing mahjong in his friends’ houses at all hours. Nevertheless she defers to him and does all the housework and cooking. Her main pleasure in life is having her hair done by the Barber, and these grooming sessions become more frequent after the Husband shows an interest in a woman nicknamed Hotpot. The story unfolds to a surprising and darkly comedic conclusion.

The Cryer respects ancient conventions and traditions, even though they work against her. Rejection by her community has ruined her life, but she admits that if the roles were reversed she would do the same. The only thing she questions is why the names of the surrounding villages refer to landscape features which do not exist. The Funeral Cryer makes the reader think about women’s universal roles, poverty, our attitudes to death and how names can dictate people’s roles in society. I found it spellbinding.

I was gifted a copy by Allen & Unwin in return for an honest review.