The Loved One Book

This is my first experience of reading Waugh, thanks to the Reading the 20th Century group. This is a savage and very funny dark comedy, subtitled "An Anglo-American Tragedy". According to Waugh's preface, it was inspired by a trip to Hollywood to meet a producer who wanted to film Brideshead Revisited, a trip on which Waugh spent much of his time in the cemetery he dubs "Whispering Glades". Much of it is about misunderstandings and cultural differences between Britain and America, and some of this seems as relevant as ever.

The story centres on Dennis Barlow, a young British writer who is earning his keep by working at a pet cemetery. He is lodging with an older writer, who is fired by his studio and reacts by hanging himself. Barlow is asked by the British community as represented by the Cricket Club to arrange an appropriate funeral, and much of the first part of the book centres on his introduction to the cemetery and its bizarre, lavish and tasteless rituals. He meets and falls for the aptly named Aimée Thanatogenos a beautician who works there, who is also being pursued by the embalmer Mr Joyboy, who sends her smiling corpses. To say much more would spoil the book for anyone new to it, but Waugh doesn't spare much sympathy for any of the characters, all of whom are rather one-dimensional.

The book is full of very funny moments and a pleasure to read.