amazon PD: The more startling for the economy of its prose and plot, this novel's story, set among the manicured lawns and euphemisms of Whispering Glades Memorial Park in Hollywood, satirizes the American way of death and offers Waugh's memento mori.

A grim and funny discourse on the death of England-as-we-knew-it and mad America's ominous ascendancy, perhaps his grimmest and funniest. His absurdist portrait of Los Angeles and Hollywood cuts just as keenly as those of Dear Old Blighty in his other novels. ( )

Funny and ironic book. Very easy to get into, very easy to put away halfway through and pick it up half a year later, as I did. Nicely written. ( )

The beginning of this book was slow going for me and I wasn't sure I was going to like the story. But, the further into it I got, the more absurd and humorous it got. I loved the mirrored funeral industries. The characters were all flawed and shallow. A much more enjoyable read than his Brideshead Revisited which I did not enjoy at all. ( )

This is a dark novel. It is the first Waugh I have read (although when I met Mr Joyboy I was sure I had read this sometime in the past) but I am not sure I was prepared for the cynical observation of a society which is truly absurd. I enjoyed it, but it certainly wasn't uplifting. Not one single character came out looking good.

Waugh's choice of the bizarre funereal rituals of Hollywood in the 1950s was inspired. Because of the macabre subject matter, each person came out as doubly as absurd. Are these people true to life, or are they skewed caricatures reflecting Waugh's own unhappiness at his time in America? It is difficult to tell, but I couldn't help be amused in a dark kind of way. ( )