The Loved One – Evelyn Waugh
The funeral business in Hollywood was cut throat in the early 1950s. Bigger, better, more glamorous – for a funeral home to really reach the pinnacle, it had to try and compete with Whispering Glades, which was truly the biggest, best and most glamorous funeral home in the whole of Hollywood.
Dennis Barlow is an English rogue, trapped in the artificiality of expatriate Hollywood where he must keep up appearances for both the British and the Americans or risk being ejected from the country. When his friend and script writer, Sir Francis, commits suicide after being pushed aside at the studio he had spent most of his life writing for, Dennis commits a crime so heinous that the ex-pat community can barely believe it. He takes a job in the Happy Havens Pet Funeral Home.
Through the arrangements for Sir Francis’ funeral, Dennis meets the ethereal Aimee Thanatogenos – a beauty consultant for the dead. Aimee is working for the famous Mr Joyboy – an embalmer who everyone looks up to and everyone adores. Thus begins a rather gruesome love triangle between Dennis and Aimee and Aimee and Mr Joyboy which ends in bizarre, almost surreal tragedy.
This is a scathing satire, highlighting the cultural clash between the British and the Americans as well as the eccentricities shown by people with money. It is grotesque and tasteless but written with such wit and humour, that you have to keep turning the page. It was clear that Waugh was not a lover of the culture within which he had to survive when he wrote this (he was in Southern California), so he chose to write a cutting comedy exposing the ridiculousness of Hollywood and the affectations which characterise it.
He created a cast of characters, all of whom were stupid and quite repulsive, but none of whom you could actually hate. All of the characters were painted perfectly for the satirical tone of the novel. It was a ridiculous world, peopled by even more ridiculous characters.
It is the first Evelyn Waugh novel I have read and I could see the author’s mastery (and bitterness) within this novella. As one of his lesser known works, it is still fantastic. If you have stopped at Brideshead Revisited it is worth having another try.
Rating: 7/10
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1948
Date Finished: 8 January 2009
Pages: 127
