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raquelssilva's review against another edition
4.0
Com os seus momentos afincados de comédia e os momentos que deveriam ser de verdadeira dor - para as outras personagens e para nós - mas que acabam por ser, como o resto, desprovidos de qualquer emoção (o que não nos deixa de emocionar pela capacidade do autor de nos fazer entrar no seu mundo sub-humano), 'O Ente Querido' é quase uma tragi-comédia, recheada de mortes, suicídios, desesperos e dores a que nossa personagem principal parece ser alheia.
http://leiturasmarginais.blogspot.pt/2017/01/o-ente-querido-evelyn-waugh.html
http://leiturasmarginais.blogspot.pt/2017/01/o-ente-querido-evelyn-waugh.html
leslielu67's review against another edition
5.0
I read this in high school English class called World Lit, taught by the basketball coach. Besides the hilarity of this book, the only other thing I remember from that class is that the boy who sat in front of me (alphabetically) asked me every day if he could borrow a pencil. And maybe some paper. Every day. It was an afternoon class.
The book is still hilarious - (Aimee Thanatagenos, enough said) - but EW is an anti-semite as is made clear in the EW's correspondence about the book's development included at the end.
The book is still hilarious - (Aimee Thanatagenos, enough said) - but EW is an anti-semite as is made clear in the EW's correspondence about the book's development included at the end.
a_o_on_the_go's review against another edition
4.0
Light, but dark. Funny, but cutting. Short, but layered.
mizpurplest's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent satire; amusing characters you never really like, which in this case is a good thing. Quite a few highly entertaining moments. Fun, fast read.
sarahrosebooks's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't much like this book. I've read some of Evelyn Waugh's other works - Brideshead Revisited and Vile Bodies, but this one was not a patch on those.
The Loved One is something of a satire, a commentary on American and British values, perhaps - I couldn't quite tell, really. I think that the characters are supposed to be horrible, and that this is supposed to be humorous, but it just left me feeling a bit...unsettled.
There was racism in here. Sure, it was written in the 1940s, but that doesn't make it okay. There's also reference to suicide, and at one point a character tells another character to kill themselves. That was quite triggering for me personally, and it is what made me decide on two stars in the end. As someone who has struggled with depression for most of my life, and has been suicidal in the past, I don't appreciate reading such things.
Overall, while I can appreciate the writing and the fact that these people are supposed to be seen as horrible, I didn't much care for the book at all and found it fairly disappointing.
The Loved One is something of a satire, a commentary on American and British values, perhaps - I couldn't quite tell, really. I think that the characters are supposed to be horrible, and that this is supposed to be humorous, but it just left me feeling a bit...unsettled.
There was racism in here. Sure, it was written in the 1940s, but that doesn't make it okay. There's also reference to suicide, and at one point a character tells another character to kill themselves. That was quite triggering for me personally, and it is what made me decide on two stars in the end. As someone who has struggled with depression for most of my life, and has been suicidal in the past, I don't appreciate reading such things.
Overall, while I can appreciate the writing and the fact that these people are supposed to be seen as horrible, I didn't much care for the book at all and found it fairly disappointing.
drvibrissae's review
4.0
I read this at the recommendation of my dad. There's a pet funeral home/crematorium in it, so kind of up my alley. Has a very dark ending.
A book about or set in Hollywood
A book about or set in Hollywood
mlautchi's review against another edition
3.0
"His swimming pool which had once flashed like an aquarium with the limbs of long-departed beauties was empty now and cracked and overgrown with weed." (7)
"And then, slipping on her professional manner again as though it were a pair of glasses, she resumed." (47)
" 'Yes, but i haven't any children. Besides I am foreigner, I have no intention of dying here.' " (52)
"But Dennis came of an earlier civilization with sharper needs. He sought the intangible, the veiled face in the fog, the silhouette at the lighted doorway, the secret graces of a body which hid itself under formal velvet. He did not covet the spoils of this rich continent, the sprawling limbs of the swimming-pool, the wide open painted eyes and mouths under arc lamps." (54)
"Normally, Dennis had found, the people of the United States were slow to resent curiosity about their commercial careers. This cosmetician, however, seemed to draw another thickness of veil between herself and her interlocutor." (57)
Listen, you delicious, hopeless creature. You are on the horns of a dilemma - which is European for being in a jam." 142
In the silence that followed her brain came to life a little. 146
Aimée swallowed her dose [of barbituates], lay down and awaited sleep. It came at length brusquely, perfunctorily, without salutation or caress. There was no delicious influx, touching, shifting, lifting, setting free and afloat the grounded kind. 148
'The Loved One: an Anglo American tragedy', Evelyn Waugh, Little, Brown and Company, Boston: 1948. (borrowed from St. Teresa's, July 2020 and read to page 63), borrowed again from St Teresa's and finished in January 2024
ignimbrite's review against another edition
4.0
Evelyn Waugh is my guilty pleasure. His books are like candy, they are so easy to read. But if they are candy, they are lemon drops coated with arsenic. Waugh's bitter, sarcastic, and completely devastating portraits of humanity warm my heart. His characters destroy each other's lives so casually, and I love it.
In The Loved One, Waugh takes on L.A. British neocolonial snobbery in post-war Southern California, set in a Disneyesque funeral home (actually a "memorial park") and a much less classy pet cemetery ("The Happier Hunting Ground"): how much better can life be?
In The Loved One, Waugh takes on L.A. British neocolonial snobbery in post-war Southern California, set in a Disneyesque funeral home (actually a "memorial park") and a much less classy pet cemetery ("The Happier Hunting Ground"): how much better can life be?