The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
#7 in my 2007 book challenge was Evelyn Waugh’s Loved One. It’s a recommendation of my husband G. Grod. It was also my attempt to sneak in a short novel before I had to read two non-fiction books for my two book groups. The Loved One is, to borrow from Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short. It’s a bleak comedy about two Hollywood funeral homes (one for pets, another for departed “Loved Ones”), a dead Hollywood failure, and a love triangle among an aspiring poet, a head embalmer, and an idealistic cosmetician. I found it perhaps more clever than enjoyable. It has the kind of biting, mean-spirited humor that I’m not always in the mood for.