The Loved One

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, 164 pages

Although Dennis Barlow initially came to Los Angeles to write for the movies, he soon found a more tasteful job working at the Happier Hunting Ground pet cemetery.  Then his host kills himself and the funeral arrangements fall to him, bringing him to Whispering Glades, the human cemetery, where he quickly becomes the third leg of a mortifying love triangle.

Waugh's satirical work often centers around his hatred of the vulgar, and given his estimation of America as the empire of vulgarity and Hollywood as its capital, it is no surprise that his usual grotesques are even more grotesque than usual here.  Yet it is the Englishman who comes off worst in the end - his mention of Henry James is neither accidental nor superfluous.