Evelyn Waugh - The Loved One

At Whispering Glades funeral home, Loved Ones is the term used to refer to the deceased. My Joyboy, a foolish, weak-willed embalmer, prepares the bodies for viewing by the Waiting Ones, the relatives and friends of the Loved Ones. Miss Aimee Thanatogenos, the appropriately named make-up artist at Whispering Glades, is young, innocent and foolish. Mr Joyboy carefully composes the faces of the Loved Ones so that they smile for her when it is time to put their make-up on. Aimee blushes and generally acts as though her head is made of air.

Dennis Barlow is a struggling poet and works as a pets' mortician. He has recently suffered the death of his uncle and house-mate, Sir Francis Hinsley, who committed suicide following his dismissal at a Hollywood studio. Barlow visits Whispering Glades, where Aimee leads him through the funeral process. He is impressed, both with the young Aimee, but also with the care and expense shown to the Loved Ones at Whispering Glades. It is a far height above the casual dumping into furnaces that makes up the majority of his own mortician's work.

Waugh writes with a cynical hand. At times, the text strays into near-parody, it is so caustic and contemptuous of the characters and situations presented. But there is enough wit and sharp insight to make the novel enjoyable. The dialogue in particular crackles, with sly British humour inserted alongside blatant parody of American language. Barlow is given the greatest lines - as a hopeful poet, he comes across as knowledgeable in the face of the grand American ignorance of poetry and culture, embodied subtlety within Aimee, and more openly in the blubbering of Mr Joyboy. There is a sense that we are in on the joke with Barlow, which may prove uncomfortable for American readers, as the Americans in the novel are without fail stupid, greedy, shallow and uncultured.

The funeral industry is something that we shall all, in one way or another, come into contact with. One can only hope that it will be at a late stage in our life, but at places like Whispering Glades, children are cared for with as much loving attention as the elderly. Waugh's sharpest insight is showing the ways in which the bereaved are persuaded into outlaying huge amounts for their deceased relatives. Yes, an appropriate and tasteful funeral certainly provides closure and allows for a certain aesthetic and emotional sensibility at a difficult time, but there is no question that some of the grander options for funerals run to the excessive. Waugh captures this almost parasitic end of the industry successfully, with Whispering Glades providing services that range from ordinary all the way up to sarcophagi and private mausoleums.

Waugh's jokes tend to the subtle when it comes to dialogue, and the savage when it comes to plot. Clever lines are so smoothly inserted that an inattentive reader may miss them: 'We usually recommend the casked half-exposure for gentlemen because the legs never look so well.' But the larger parodies of plot are easier to spot. Throughout the novel, Aimee is torn between her love for Barlow and her desire for career advancement through Mr Joyboy, which prompts her to write a series of purple letters to the Guru Brahmin, a conglomerate of 'two gloomy men and a bright young secretary', who share the workload of the Guru's newspaper column. Aimee, of course, believes that the Guru is a wise man from India, one who is more than capable of helping her choose the right man. We know the joke's on her, but we are also able to raise the satire to a higher level, in realising that, while she helps relieve grieving relatives of their money, outside of work she is capable of being all but swindled by an imaginary Guru.

An easy criticism of the novel is that none of the characters are particularly likable. Aimee is naive and hopelessly shallow, while Mr Joyboy is ridiculous and far too much of a mother's boy. Barlow is the most sympathetic of the characters, but only because we are amused by his caustic wit. Take that away, and he is as unappealing as the others. But the novel exists as a satire, not a character study, and it is there where it succeeds. The funeral industry is as ripe as any other for savaging, and Waugh more than rises to the challenge.

The ending to the novel is an incredibly neat fit. Too neat to be anything but contrived, though again, this works because of the novel's intention. The ending is foreshadowed on almost every page, and if that isn't enough, Aimee's name gives the game away. While it does wrap up a little too neatly for Barlow, the novel ends in the way that a novel satirical of the funeral industry must. The Loved Ones is short, funny and very sharp.

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