The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy

A riotous caper in the graveyards of southern California. Southern California, as readers of Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" will know, is unique in the splendid elaboration of its graveyards and funeral customs. Set against a background of embalming rooms and crematoria and the unforgettable Whispering Glades Memorial Park, "The Loved One" is as ludicrous as "Decline and Fall", as incisively shocking as "Vile Bodies" and - underneath the laughs - as moving as death itself. A triumph of barbed flippancy.