t*** scroll down for German review **I cried for the last five chapters of this book. I re-read paragraphs, because I was forced, again and again, to stop in the very middle of a sentence to wipe the tears off.I love Russian. This short, laconic language; the ways to construct a sentence comparable only to Latin; the grammatical forms, which are frowned upon in today's German (also in English, but there with a reason, I think), but are still part of the Russian, the proper beautiful Russian of a Ludmila Ulitzkaya, where they are not overtaken by fashion. I love it, that saying "because" is so laborious and therefore the stories are without "because". It does not happen because, it happens. The "because" comes afterwards. In a later chapter, jumping back twenty year and still fitting so well into the story, as if the time were not totally disarranged here, but followed its natural course. In a single sentence. In a single word, which suddenly reveals the most important, predominant feature of a character.There is nothing magical, fantastic in this book. Alik is dying, a russian-jewish emigrant in Manhattan, a not too successful painter, but not a total failure. Nothing else happens. No big disclosures. No big secrets.And yet there is something magical - an other way to see the reality, a naive one perhaps, too positive one, just ignoring so much - Alik's way, who does not even have a health insurance and who, up to the last moment and afterwards loves laughing, loves people around him. But perhaps the only way to be happy. Because the our everyday life is not so much different. Not crazier that Alik's dying. Not bleaker than Irina's or Valentina's life. Not more childish, more helpless that Nina. Not... Not different, just seen in an other way.There are so many small things that come together in this great story.All the character, emerging from nothingness and the past and leaving again, all the short appearances, which go directly to the heart with just one paragraph, through skin and muscle and bone, painful and sweet and unbelievably alive. All the lives, summed up in just a few sentences, the reductions of emigrant lives - emigrants in a sense in which we all are emigrants, expelled from our childhood, prior relationships, the naivete, the last flat, a friendship. Uprooted trees, growing at a new place, perhaps even more beautiful than we would have been before. But this comparison does not matter, as there is no second chance. Or, like Irina (or the author?) thinks: The past is irreversible. And what is there to undo at all?I do not want to analyze how, on so few pages in such a big font, an author can create characters growing so much on the reader. Whose sparks so easily find a place in my heart. I do not want to analyze how much of what I see in this characters is influences by what I myself experiences, how much of it is Russian, Jewish, how much of it is searching in a foreign world, or the intentionaly naive and trusting. I just want every book to be like this one. To touch the reader like this one do. The world would be a better place than.**************Ich habe die letzten fünf Kapitel dieses Buches durchgeweint - unkontrolliert, endlos, mit laufender Nase. Ich habe Absätze immer wieder gelesen, weil ich in der Mitte eines Satzes stehen bleiben musste, um mir das Wasser aus den Augen zu wischen.Ich liebe das Russische. Das kurze, lakonische dieser Sprache, die Satzkonstruktionen, wie es sie sonst nur im Lateinischen gibt, die Formen, die im heutigen Deutschen verpönt sind, aber im Russischen, im guten, schönen Russichen einer Ljudmila Ulitzkaja, immer noch dazu gehören, noch nicht von der Mode eingeholt sind. Ich liebe es, dass es so umständlich ist "weil" zu sagen, und es deswegen Texte ohne "weil" sind. Es passiert nicht weil, sondern es passiert. Das Weil kommt danach. In einem nachgeschobenen Kapitel, das plötzlich zwanzig Jahre zurück springt und sich dennoch so flüssig in den Erzählfluss einfügt, als werde hier die Zeit nicht wild durcheinander geworfen, sondern folge ihren natürlichen Verlauf. In einem einzelnen Satz. In einem Wort, das plötzlich die wichtigste, beherrschende Eigenschaft einer Figur offen legt.Es ist nichts magisches in diesem Buch, nicht phantastisches. Alik stirbt (man stelle sich dieses Verb in einer Verlaufsform vor, nicht als abgeschlossene Handlung - auch wenn es diese Unterscheidung im Deustchen nicht so schön, so eindeutig ist wie im Russischen), ein russisch-jüdischer Emigrant in Manhattan, ein nicht besonders erfolgreicher Maler, aber keine gescheiterte Existenz. Es passiert sonst nichts. Keine großen Enthüllungen. Keine großen Geheimnisse.Und doch ist da etwas zauberhaftes - ein anderer Blick auf die Wirklichkeit, ein naiver vielleicht, ein zu positiver, einer, der vieles einfach ignoriert - Aliks Blick, der nicht einmal eine Krankenversicherung hat, der bis zum letzten Augenblick und danach das Lachen und die Menschen liebt. Aber vielleicht der einzige, der glücklich machen kann. Denn so viel anders ist der Alltag, den wir alle leben, nicht. Nicht verrückter, als Aliks Sterben. Nicht trostloser als Irinas oder Valentinas Leben. Nicht kindischer, hilfloser als Nina. Nicht... Nicht anders, nur anders gesehen.Es sind so viele kleine Dinge, die das wunderbare Ganze formen.All die Figuren, die auftauchen und wieder gehen, all die kurzen Auftritte, die sich mit einem Absatz direkt ins Herz fressen, durch Haut und Muskel und Knochen, schmerzhaft und süß und unglaublich lebendig. All die Leben, zusammengefasst in wenigen Sätzen, die Reduktionen von Emigrantenschicksälen - Emigranten in jedem Sinne, in dem wir alle Emigranten sind, ausgestoßen aus der Kindheit, aus früheren Beziehungen, aus der Naivität, aus der letzten Wohnung, aus einer Freundschaft, entwurzelte Bäume, die an neuer Stelle wachsen, vielleicht schöner, als sie sonst je gewesen wäre. Aber was spielt es für eine Rolle, wenn man keine zweite Chance hat? Oder, wie Irina (oder die Autorin?) denkt: Die Vergangenheit ist nicht rückgängig zu machen. Und was soll man da überhaupt rückgängig machen?Ich will nicht analysieren, wie man es schafft, auf so wenigen Seiten in einer so großen Schrift, Figuren zu erschaffen, die dem Leser so ans Herz wachsen. Deren Funke etwas ist, was sich so leicht einen Platz in meinem Herzen finden. Ich will nicht analysieren, wie viel davon, was ich in diesen Figuren sehe, dadurch beeinflusst ist, was ich selbst erlebt habe, wie viel davon russisch, jüdisch, in der Fremde suchend, mit Absicht naiv und zu vertrauensvoll ist. Ich will einfach, dass jedes Buch so ist. Jedes Buch so berührt. Dann wäre die Welt besser.
"The Funeral Party" was a fun book to read. The social atmosphere of the characters in the novel was fascinating to me. By the time I got to the end, I still could not tell about 75% of the characters apart, but I feel as if that did not hinder my ability to understand the book. The main characters all had their own easily-identifiable back-stories, so they were easy to differentiate. The central premise of the book, a dying man surrounded by loved ones in his last few days, is a fresh take on the immigrant experience that I have not seen in many other places. It was done effectively, and got me to think about things in a new way. This was an interesting perspective especially because the dying man seemed almost entirely Americanized, while the plethora of people surrounding him filled the novel with cultures from practically every corner of Eastern Europe, the United States, Paraguay, and beyond. The reason why this book only rates as four stars for me is that there is not much of an ongoing hook that prevented me from being able to put the book down. It was well-written, vividly described the lives of the characters, and even comically enhanced the shortcomings of most of the characters. But while reading it there were very few surprises. From the beginning I knew the ending, and the author made no attempts to conceal that that was the case. The interactions between the characters, and the back-stories behind the dying man and all the women he loved, were what made the book fun for me. However, that that may not be enough for everybody.
Do You like book The Funeral Party (2002)?
Home. A powerful and multipurpose word. Some argue it is where ever you and yours are, others that it is a place that one can never return to once they have left. This is one of the many complex themes tackled in Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel The Funeral Party. Manhattan in the summer can be an oppressive place, for a group of Russian immigrants it is made all the more unbearable because they are gathered together to sit by the death bed of a beloved friend, Alik. An artist, friend to all, and particular lover of women, Alik is confined to his loft apartment where many desperate friends wander in and out to visit him, support each other, and ultimately to form and ad hoc family. Alik’s alcoholic wife is desperate to have him baptized before his death, while their remains the question of reconciling to the faith of his birth with the help of a rabbi. Also at his side are his mistress, a former lover and her young daughter as well as young doctor, unable to pass his exams in the US due to his difficulty with the written and spoken language. They are joined by a recent émigré, recently reunited with her son. As the group argues, drinks Vodka and supports one another, a coup is attempted in Moscow and politics what it means to be Russian enters the discussion. Emotionally charged and filled with insights into life and death, love and heartbreak, home and immigration The Funeral Party is a powerful book, one that should not be missed.
—Amy
Russian emigre community in New York from the 70s up until the failed coup in Moscow. Centered around the magnetic Alik, a painter and lover of life who's not much good at making money, but very good at making people happy. The book is full of wonderful insights into universals of human behavior, and ponders the unanswerable question of why Soviet Russia had any charm, and in fact, so much charm. She writes, and I paraphrase, that one difference between America and Russia is that the former devotes itself to relieving its people from suffering, whereas the latter loved and valued suffering. This, she says, likens all Russians to Jews, "whose blood carried within it a special substance [that made them Jewish] that disintegrated upon [suffering's] absence.I admire Ms Ulitskaya for the world she creates so completely in only 50,000 words, with its beautiful women, its priests, its jews, its circus acrobats, its strong passions, its sadness and hopefulness. I'll be reading more of her work, and am looking forward to translations of her early short stories, if I can find them.
—Dan Seligson
In the hothouse of an art studio in New York, a Russian emigré lives his final days immobilized by a nervous system affliction, surrounded by an entourage of friends embodying the variety of the Russian immigrant experience. It's a short story, as he rapidly fades, but over the length of its 150-odd pages, The Funeral Party reveals the complexities of relationship within this cast of characters and their bonds to the dying artist, Alik. This is a very accomplished capsule of the human condition, given its brief length, but perhaps all that needs be said can be very brief. As witnessed through the Russian immigrant filter, the truths of friendship and the temporal nature of human existence are universalized.
—Jeff Friederichsen
