The Loved One

"A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything [Waugh] has ever done," satirizing 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide (New Yorker).

Following the death of a friend, the 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—and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.


"Fiendishly entertaining."—New York Times

"As a piece of writing it is nearly faultless; as satire it is an act of devastation." —The New Republic

"Mr. Waugh's treatment of his macabre material is uninhibited, and wickedly funny . . . as sadistic, playful, and decisive as a cat's paw on a mouse." ―Alice S. Morris, New York Times Book Review