|
|
Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - The Funeral Party
|
List Price: $18.95
Our Price: $1.88
Your Save: $ 17.07 ( 90% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Schocken
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.735
EAN: 9780805241853
ISBN: 080524185X
Label: Schocken
Manufacturer: Schocken
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 160
Publication Date: 2001-01-09
Publisher: Schocken
Release Date: 2001-01-09
Studio: Schocken
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best books by Ulitskaya
Comment: One of the best books by Ulitskaya, strongly recommend it to anyone interested in modern Russian literature.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps it's lost in translation
Comment: "The Funeral Party" is a delightful novella that offers readers an intimate look into the lives of a select few characters who are as different as night and day. All of these colorful characters are connected to one another for two reasons; they are immigrants from Russia and they have all known and loved a dying man by the name of Alik. In his last days of life in August of 1991, they gather to say their goodbyes, and reflect on their own lives.
The prospect of death is a natural occasion for people to analyze their life - its triumphs and mistakes. And that is exactly what Ulitskaya's characters do. They ponder over their pasts and presents, and we progressively learn what their connection to the dying man was. We discover their passions and their fears, their frustrations and their hopes, their dreams and their realities. All are beautifully written and played out by believable, vivid characters.
Yet "The Funeral Party" reads less as a novel than a series of character vignettes, exploring the inner-workings of each player in this sad, final saga of Alik's life. The connection between them is loose, but perhaps it is lost in the translation. However, overall Ulitskaya offers a wonderful and odd portrait of a wonderfully odd familiy of Russian immigrants.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Death And Mourning Russian Style
Comment: Ludmila Ulitskaya has written an insightful novel on human behavior, and an amusing tale as well. The title put me in mind of what many would first think of when it came to an Irish Wake. However these émigrés from Russia begin their reminiscing, their grieving, and their personal battles well before the death of the man who is the center of their attention.Ms. Ulitskaya brings a wide range of characters to her tale, from a young girl who seems almost selectively Autistic, to the dying subject who has lead the life of a Greenwich Village Don Juan, to the woman who adore him and revile their challengers for his affection. If this is not enough the poor invalid is hounded to become a Christian, however he also wishes to see a Rabbi, and thus the Author begins a conflict between religious positions that are represented by men who will never agree and will eventually be usurped in their function. Their final comedy takes place graveside when competing methods for the burial of the dead ring the grave for prominence of voice and position. The Author spent time on a subject that I wish occupied more of her writing. She explored the need of émigrés to constantly seek affirmation that their Mother Country that they left behind was indeed not worthy of their citizenship. They must constantly reassure each other and themselves, with current events in Moscow is possible, that they indeed did not run away but moved on to a better life. The book is well written although there appear to be either some awkward translation or outright errors with a word on occasion. This is not truly detrimental to the story, however it does interrupt the cadence of the tale when a jarring word that clearly has no place makes an appearance. Well worth the allocation of some of your reading time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Refreshing, entertaining, irreverent fun
Comment: In a New York City loft on the eve of the second Russian revolution (1991), a group of friends, mostly former Russians, gather to watch over their friend, an artist named Alik, who is dying. If this sounds like a plot of gloom, you're wrong. As the title suggests, it's a celebration, during which the Russian emigre experience late 20th century style, is rehashed with equal doses of humor and pathos, and colorfully told in a way that only a Russian author could do justice to.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Funeral Party
Comment: I liken Ludmila Ulitskaya to a Dostoyevsky of today. "The Funeral Party" offers a taste of the elusive Russian mind set.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?
This marvelous group of individuals inhabits the first novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya to be published in English, a book that was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and has been praised wherever translated editions have appeared. Simultaneously funny and sad, lyrical in its Russian sorrow and devastatingly keen in its observation of character, The Funeral Party introduces to our shores a wonderful writer who captures, wryly and tenderly, our complex thoughts and emotions confronting life and death, love and loss, homeland and exile.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
