Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2173782 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover

Synopsis
Following the death of a friend, poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering into the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There, Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimee, the naive Californian corpse beautician, and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art ...A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, "The Loved One" depicts a world where love, reputation and death cost a very great deal.

Customer Reviews

Love and Dying in Los Angeles
This is one of Waugh's lesser known books, but should by no means be forgotten or ignored. His black humour is as prevalent as ever, and his characters are as well created as anyone in Brideshead or any or his more well known works.

Placing one of his upper class wasters in such a foreign world as LA is a stroke of genius and the culture clash is brilliantly exposed. Dennis Barlow is the perfect stoic anti-hero, instantly loveable and detestable at once.

If you've read any of Waugh's other long novels, you'll love every page, if not this is a perfect introduction to a master of storytelling.

On embalming in LA
This book is utterly wicked and in thoroughly bad taste. In short, I absolutely loved it. This work is not for the faint of heart nor for the easily offended. I'm surprised that Waugh was never sued for libel by Forest Lawn in Los Angeles. Having lived in LA for two years, I did visit Forest Lawn. It is everything that Waugh describes and more!

The Loved One
One of Waugh's less well known works, The Loved One is a black romp through the strange world of California's Funerary parlours. A tragic love affair begins at Whispering Glades, where many of California's deceased elite are buried, preserved and even put on display and ends at the Happier Hunting Ground pet mortuary. Less riotous or slapstick than Waugh's other books, The Loved One is however extremely humorous with a truly tragic ending on a par with Shakespeare himself.
Characters ranging from a young englishman attempting to make his way forward in Hollywood, to Mr Joyboy the accomplished mortician, his mother and her parrot cannot fail to draw the reader in and entertain in a way that only Evelyn Waugh could.
This book is a must for anyone who has enjoyed the more popular 'Decline and Fall' or Brideshead revisited' and is an excellent introduction to the author for those who have not read any of his other works.