The Loved One
Following the death of a friend, British poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering 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 Onedepicts a world where love, reputation and death cost a very great deal.
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2recommend
3mentions
2people
2015–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- After Many a Summer Dies a Swan is perhaps best remembered today for having been mentioned in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, but it's definitely worth reading. The 1950s saw a number of British ex-pats in Los Angles writing novels about their experiences. Isherwood's novel is another classic of the genre although the best of the lot, in my opinion, is Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (just skip the atrocious movie of the same title which was so bad, Waugh stipulated that Hollywood would never again get to film his work).
- Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One covers the same ground but is much funnier.
Especially amusing is Waugh's invention of the "Happier Hunting Ground annual postcard service" for dearly departed pets that predicts features discussed for the never built "After I Go" app that features in the article. Stay crazy California!
- His journey doesn’t really follow that pattern though. The Loved One, a deeply iconoclastic satirical novel came after Brideshead.
