The Loved One FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Hollywood, at Whispering Glades, a full-service funeral home for departed greats, the mononymonous Mr. Joyboy and Aimee Thanatogenos fall in love...with each other and their work. He is chief embalmer, she a crematorium cosmetician. They spend their days contentedly prepping the loved ones for a final appearance.
Into this idyllic scene comes Denis Barlow, aspiring poet and funerary colleague. But Denis is downscale, his employer the Happier Hunting Ground, a pet cemetery. Denis looks to Aimee for professional reconstruction, falls in love with her instead, and sets up a triangle that is literally more than Aimee can bear.
"A fiendishly entertaining book -- Evelyn Waugh has never written more brilliantly. Devilishly, impishly amusing." (The New York Times)
SYNOPSIS
In The Loved One, Waugh takes an acerbic look at Hollywood's way of life and the American way of death. His hero, British expatriate Dennis Barlow, is an aspiring poet who composes by day and works by night at the Happier Hunting Ground, a local pet cemetery. By chance he is called on to arrange a funeral for a fellow Brit (a victim of the movie industry) at the resplendent Whispering Glades Cemetery, where he meets Aimee Thanatogenos, the beautiful junior cosmetician, and Mr. Joyboy, the senior mrotician, and the plots shifts into hilarious high gear.
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