The Loved One

By Evelyn Waugh

America and Britain swirl together in this delightful satire.
 
Dennis Barlow came to America as a poet, hired to write a screenplay for a movie studio. But that ended badly, and so he has taken a job at a pet cemetery, a choice that has left other members of the British expat community in Hollywood quite taken aback, though they are quickly distracted by the suicide of one of their own. Barlow is tasked with the funeral arrangements, during which process he meets the beautiful Aimée Thanatogenos. Can he keep himself in the good graces of his countrymen, and Ms. Thanatogenos – especially after the passing of other poets’ works as his own?
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9780735253049

Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) estudió historia moderna en Oxford, donde llevó, según sus palabras, una vida de "pereza, disolución y derroche". Publicó en 1928 su primera novela, "Cuerpos viles", "¡Noticia bomba!" y "Merienda de negros", publicadas en esta colección, que le establecieron como el novelista cómico inglés más considerabe desde Dickens. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el influjo de su conversión al catolicismose hizo muy acusado; destacan entre las obras de dicho periodo "Retorno a Brideshead", la trilogía "La espada del honor" y también "Los seres queridos", en la que regresó a la veta satírica de sus primeras novelas.

Reviews for The Loved One

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very amusing satire with tragic and merciless twists.

[marcusbastos-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Business of Life and DeathThis was my first reading of Evelyn Waugh. His description of the mortician business in Los Angeles is realistic and funny. His prose is fluid and entertaining. His characters are hilarious, cynical and selfish. The result is a story at the same time representative of the period/place it refers (years before WWII) and pleasant for the reader. The irony of the author and the somewhat hypocrisy and superficiality of the characters combined to a great story.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hysterically funny.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was not funny except in a grotesque way. Well, it was funny as a whole - it's very writey - pouncey and arty. if you know what I mean. Enjoyed it.

[becky221_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very funny sarcastic look at Hollywood life and death. Evelyn Waugh pokes fun at both Americans and Brits. An enjoyable read, but lacking in depth.

[auntieknickers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

WOnderful satire. Read along with [b:The American Way of Death] for another British look at the American funeral industry.

[mamashepp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The sarcasm drips from the pages. But so many books that really on sarcasm are so depressing and negative. This one is actually funny. Perhaps it helps to be cynical to enjoy this--that would explain why I like it so much!

[katherine_ashe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Having spent my early childhood in Los Angeles, where my best friend lived at the Utter McKinley Funeral Home and arrived at school in a hearse, this book offers more to me than hilarity, it offers a brilliant insight into the place of my birth. And anyone who has ever buried a relative at Forest Lawn will know it's all true!

[xinyi_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Evelyn Waugh never fails me!

[dbsovereign · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A good book to read even if you don't particularly like Waugh's brand of satiric wit. Droll, but true.

[mizpurplest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent satire; amusing characters you never really like, which in this case is a good thing. Quite a few highly entertaining moments. Fun, fast read.

[mojacobs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was the first ever book I read in English - and I was hooked from the moment the central character is preparing for lunch and takes his sandwiches out of the fridge where the dead cats and dogs are kept. Waugh opened a new world for me with his satirical take on a vast range of subjects - quite an eyeopener for a girl from Antwerp in the sixties.

[joririchardson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Loved One" is the story of two men who both want to marry the same woman. Dennis Barlow is a British poet who meets his love when a friend passes away, and he has to go to a nearby funeral home to make arrangements. There he meets Miss Thantogenos, a lovely cosmetician. However, her heart is torn between the charming European writer and her long-time best friend, Mr. Joyboy, who also works with her at the morgue.The love triangle was not over played out, which I greatly appreciated. In fact, this book contained little, if any, romance at all, and was laid out factually, in to-the-point writing.But perhaps this lends itself to the reason that I did not find this book to be anything more than average.The characters seemed distant, and the writing too dry. Not very much happened, and the book took quite a while to get started. I had to wade through the first third of the book in yawns.I did like the dry humor in this book - Waugh does it so much better in "Brideshead Revisited," though.Also, I loved the descriptions of the funeral home and the morgue. It was beautiful and poetic - not dreary or morbid at all. I would like to research cosmetician's jobs more, especially now in modern days.This is an okay book, in my opinion. Nothing majorly horrible to say about it in particular, but it just didn't catch my attention.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In which Waugh again proves that the satisfactions of 'realistic' fiction are pretty pale compared to the satisfactions of vicious, spiteful, hate-filled satire. The characters, plot and setting are all paper thin, but that helps the book with it's main point, which is to make you laugh out loud and recognize the ugliness, stupidity and vanity of the world in general. There's nothing and nobody redeeming here. The Brits are snobs and/or morons; the Yanks are James-lite innocents with none of the charming homeliness of actual innocents in James novels. If nothing else, reading this book will give the this please: next time you hear an American conservative complain about a 'culture of death,' you'll be able to remember 'The Loved One,' smirk, and take pleasure in the fact that a genuine conservative would consider the American conservative to be a repulsive boil on the arse of humankind.

[literarytiger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a dark novel. It is the first Waugh I have read (although when I met Mr Joyboy I was sure I had read this sometime in the past) but I am not sure I was prepared for the cynical observation of a society which is truly absurd. I enjoyed it, but it certainly wasn't uplifting. Not one single character came out looking good. Waugh's choice of the bizarre funereal rituals of Hollywood in the 1950s was inspired. Because of the macabre subject matter, each person came out as doubly as absurd. Are these people true to life, or are they skewed caricatures reflecting Waugh's own unhappiness at his time in America? It is difficult to tell, but I couldn't help be amused in a dark kind of way.

[ficusfan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be an odd book. I realize it is supposed to be a black comedy, and a satire skewering social mores, I am just not sure who is being raked over the coals.One the one hand Waugh takes lots of shots at the whole British myth, and then he takes on superficial life in Southern California. Perhaps both are being lambasted. Its hard to tell, because the writing is very sketchy, and there are obscure references to people or events that were current in Waugh's times. I am fine with the older literary references, I am just not that familiar with Waugh's times or those of WWII and the aftermath.I also didn't find it all that funny, not because of the darkness or the suicides, I like black comedy, it just didn't work for me. I don't see anything wrong or blackly humorous in trying to ease the pain and fear of death, for either humans or pets. I don't see the harm in giving the Loved One (again human or pet) dignity and a good send off. If at times the actual event fails to rise to the proper level (or misses the mark and goes over the top), then it should be remembered that its the thought or attempt that counts.Waugh compares the factory Hollywood studio system of the time to the factories that turn out the dead, using the same type of fake sentiment we have since come to call Disney-fication. While Hollywood sends out mind-numbing, dumb, comforting pap, that lowers the common denominator both then and now, mortuaries are doing a service in helping people get through a difficult time. Those that don't need the help, will pick something more austere, but those that do need it are comforted by it. I suppose the connection is that fuzzy thinking and a preference for a comforting myth around death, can translate into the same mode of dealing with the real world and actual life as well as death. Both UK and US culture partake of the use of myths and fuzzy thinking, they just do it differently. Who is to say which is best ?I think he is comparing English culture to Hollywood (the grand important techni-color myth ) and US Culture to the mortuary industry (fake, schmaltzy, myth that glorifies stupidity, safety, and pre-packaged sameness).In any event I didn't find it all that funny, or insightful, and it certainly wasn't well written, nor did the story or the characters interest all that much.

[imnotsatan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A hilariously cruel satire of the commercialization of sentiment. Definitely a classic of the genre.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A really funny book about death,embalming and crematoria.(both human and animal)Yes I did say funny! It tells of the love triangle of Dennis Barlow who works at the 'Happy Hunting Grounds' pet crematoria,before meeting Aimee Thanatogenos who is an assistant to Mr Joyboy,chief embalmer at the 'Whispering Glades' Memorial Park.These three diverse characters form this unusual triangle with somewhat unfortunate results.

[prop2gether · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Delightful take on death and dying, and the mechanics of Hollywood, which, on reflection, haven't changed much since this novella was published. Very funny and recommended.

[jennyo_587543 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quick, entertaining read about the packaging of funerary services in the U.S. As always with Waugh, it's funny and mean. There's a movie based on this book, but it's not available on DVD yet. Sure wish it were. It stars Jonathan Winters, John Gielgud, Liberace, Robert Morse, Roddy McDowell, Tab Hunter, and Milton Berle. I'd like to see it someday.

[clothingoptional · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The funniest book about pet cemetaries ever written (and considering the topic, that's saying alot).

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In some ways this should even start sniffily, like, "A minor effort from Waugh . . ." but my god wouldn't that be churlish, because this book is funny as shit. New-future Hollywood necrophile weirdness smack against the sharper irony of the English colonial chancer. The Isherwood autobiography, Daniel Martin and Henry Fucking James in 100-odd pages, with a killer wit that's like ohhhhhh snap.

[tuxable · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Biting, indeed. Satire on . . . what? Ex-pat englishmen? Holywood? American vapidity? The funeral business? Definitely not a love story. Bubble-headed female character. Heartless men. A system so broken there is no one to cheer for.

[behemothing-2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really liked Dr. Joyboy, but this book left me unsatisfied.

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Curious how the book, while being much more restrained, goes so much further than the movie.

[danajean_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The beginning of this book was slow going for me and I wasn't sure I was going to like the story. But, the further into it I got, the more absurd and humorous it got. I loved the mirrored funeral industries. The characters were all flawed and shallow. A much more enjoyable read than his Brideshead Revisited which I did not enjoy at all.

[emhromp2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Funny and ironic book. Very easy to get into, very easy to put away halfway through and pick it up half a year later, as I did. Nicely written.

[madmouth_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A grim and funny discourse on the death of England-as-we-knew-it and mad America's ominous ascendancy, perhaps his grimmest and funniest. His absurdist portrait of Los Angeles and Hollywood cuts just as keenly as those of Dear Old Blighty in his other novels.

[thosgpetri · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

From 1948, Waugh tears into vulgarities of the funeral industry. Set in 1940's Hollywood it focuses on conspicuous consumption, ego building, and nationalism. The Brits in this story feel above the Americans (culturally) but act no better. Just different. The clash of attitudes demonstrates superficial attitudes and emotions. A call for self-evaluation by individuals and societies. Waugh certainly earned his standing as a author well worth reading.

[jbgusa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hilarious satire about the rather disgusting burial industry. It was, from what I remember (I read it about 42 years ago) a parody of Forest Lawn Cemetery in California. I read it in the wake of my father's death at the age of 47 when I was 15. The rather aggressive funeral director corresponded well to the book.