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When Francis Hinsley lost his job as a writer in a film company in Hollywood he kills himself. Dennis Barlow a friend of him works in the happier hunting ground which is a funeral home for pets. Dennis now is instructed to arrange about Francis funeral. For this he visited Whispering Glades which is huge cementry. There you can chose the way of beeing buried. The ways of disposal are inhumement , entombment , inurnment , inmurement and insarcophagusment . There is also the possibility of getting an mausoleum with or without a stained-glasse window above. Whispering Glades is a kind of cementry-park which is zoned and each zone has ist name and special Work of Art. The zones vary in price and within the zones the prices vary according to their proximity to the Work of Art For example there is poet's corner The way your are buried depends on the money you'll spend on it.
Dennis fixes the ceremony for a Thursday and the leave-taking in the afternoon the day before. After the funeral he walks around in the park. Somewhere he sats down in the shade to write a poem. After he had written a few lines sometimes Aimée Thanatogenos who works in Whispering Glades as a cosmetician comes around. She works there with Mr. Joyboy who is very popular at the other women working in Whispering Glades.
Six weeks after Aimée met Dennis at the Lake Island in the Whispering Glades Park she wrote a letter to Guru Brahim who is a spirutal director who daily filled a famous column in one of the local newspapers. The content of this letters was that Aimée couldn't choose between Dennis Barlow and Mr. Joyboy, because she liked both.
One day when Mr. Joyboy told Aimée that she could work as a enbalmer and did'nt have to be cosmetician she was very happy. Mr. Joyboy invited her for supper in the evening. When she met Dennis they quarreled and so she thought her situation would be clear, but in the evening when she visited Mr. Joyboy everything was just the other way of what she expected.
Behind the Guru Brahim stand two persons. One who writes the texts for the daily column and the other on who answers the letters which come in for advice. The one who answers the letters is a heavy smoker and drinks his whisky a usual in the morning and is always in a very bad mood. Everytime he gets a letter from Aimée it gets on his nerves.
When the parrot of Mrs. Joyboy dies Mr Joyboy arranges a funeral at the Happier Hunting Ground and invites Aimée Thanatogenos, and so she knows that Dennis works there. She is very dissappointed.
When Dennis trys to talk to her she gets depressive and wants that Mr. Joyboy comes over to her apartment. On the phone he explains that he cannot leave his mother in the moment because she got a new parrot. Aimée walks around at night and then she goes to Whispering Glades. There in the enbalmer-room of Mr. Joyboy she gives herself an injection of cyanide
When Mr. Joyboy finds Aimée's corpse he tells Dennis about it because he cannot tell anybody else, because he might lose his job. They decide to burn Aimée's remains at the crematory of the Happier hunting Ground. Dennis and Mr. Joyboy want to let it seem the way that Aimée and Dennis went away together. Dennis after he has done his job at the Happier Hunting Ground goes back to England by the advice from Sir Ambrose Abercombie.
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