The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Part of the reason I wanted to read this is because I've got Will Self's novel, Dorian, sitting on my shelf and I thought I might get more out of it if I'd read this first. Of course, most of us know the story, but with something this well known it can often be surprising to read the original novel and see how it can differ from your preconceptions.

The first we learn of Dorian is through a conversation between Basil Hallwood and Harry Wootton. Basil is an artist who has become completely infatuated with the young Dorian, who is fresh faced, youthful, innocent, and becomes Basil's artistic muse. His friend Harry is intrigued to meet the boy who has inspired such devotion and goes with him to watch him create his latest portrait of Dorian. This turns out to be a masterpiece which captures Dorian's beauty perfectly, and which Basil gives to Dorian as a gift.

After an impassioned speech from Harry about the golden days of youth and how precious and fleeting they are, Dorian makes a wish. He wishes that the portrait could grow old instead of him, and display all his wrinkles and blemishes, while his own face remains as clear and fresh as the day it was painted.

The book is filled with hateful people, not least of which is Harry, who is partly responsible for what happens next. Wilde is less interested in the effects of age on the features than in the effects of sin, and as Harry uses his influence over Dorian to set him on an evil path, Dorian's every cruelty shows up on the portrait. You could argue that there are religious overtones here; that even though a person may look innocent, somewhere his misdeeds are being recorded and they may be used against him one day.

The book caused a huge scandal when it was first published, and it's easy to see why. Wilde is so obviously writing about romantic infatuation between Dorian and Harry, and even more so between Basil and Dorian, that I wonder at his bravery publishing certain chapters given the attitudes at the time. In fact, it did come back to haunt him later as parts of The Picture of Dorian Gray were read out at Wilde's trial as evidence against him.

Oscar Wilde is possibly best known for his clever witticisms and, even in a book as dark as this, there are a few examples to be found that made me smile. One thing that didn't make me smile is his attitude towards women. He says some terrible things about women in general and its obvious he felt nothing but distain for the whole gender, even after making allowances for nineteenth-century attitudes. Not cool, Mr Wilde.

The idea of a portrait that grows older, and that becomes more grotesque with every sin, is pretty amazing. The passages that focus on the picture are still very creepy to read today, and Wilde does a great job of imagining how it might feel to have a thing like that in your attic. Dorian is horrified by it, but he's also compelled by it, and he can't resist going to peek at it every so often to see how it's changed.

I had some reservations about The Picture of Dorian Gray, and found it a little slow moving in parts, but the plot and characters are so strong that I can see why it's considered a classic. Four stars.

Bout of Books - The Updates

So this is how it works, right? I post about each day's progress after the day is over? Well, it's now 10.30am on Tuesday and I've only just woken up (oh, how I love having time off work), and so now seems like a good time to tell you about yesterday, and also set up the post for future updates through the week. 

Monday

I got off to a great start and read one whole book. It was quite a chunky book too. To be honest, Ferney was so amazing I don't think I could have put it down anyway, so it's a good job I didn't have to. I also managed to write one review, which isn't the two I was hoping for, but that's OK.

Books read from - Ferney by James Long

Pages read - 536

Reviews written - 1

Running total - Books: 1, Pages: 536

Tuesday

I didn't quite manage to keep distractions at bay yesterday, so ended up reading less than on Monday, though I still finished a book so I'm happy with that. I couldn't gather the enthusiasm to write a review however, which isn't so good, but I'll try and do better for the rest of the week!

Books read from - Tideline by Penny Hancock

Pages read - 340

Reviews written -  0

Running Total - Books: 2, Pages: 876

Wednesday

Oooh, three fewer pages than the previous day - yes, I'm slacking indeed ;-) Valentine Grey was an amazing book - one of the best historical novels I've read in ages and quite the emotional rollercoaster. I did write a review of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the morning, intending to write another one in the evening, but it didn't quite happen, so I'm still behind but not catastrophically so. All in all I'd say this read-a-thon is going pretty well.

Books read from -Valentine Grey by Sandi Toksvig

Pages read - 337

Reviews written -  1

Running Total - Books: 3, Pages: 1213

Thursday

We finally got a bit of sunshine yesterday, so I decided to spend most of my time out and about enjoying it. It was lovely, but it does mean my page count suffered and yesterday was the first day I didn't read a whole book. Ah well, never mind - Bout of Books is supposed to be low pressure so I won't get too upset over it. Lack of book finishing in no way reflects on the awesomeness of my current read; Final Demand is seriously good, quite dark and disturbing, and with a great plot that's twisting and turning all over the place. I shall definitely finish it soon.

Books read from - Final Demand by Deborah Moggach

Pages read - 134

Reviews written -  0

Running Total - Books: 3.5, Pages:1347

Friday
Oh dear, I started the week with such lofty expectations, but I'm afraid that page count just keeps on dropping. Do I have an amazing excuse for not reading much yesterday? Um... not really. I kind of got sidetracked by The Sims - there's something about that game that just swallows time! I did at least finish Final Demand, so it wasn't an entirely wasted day, but I'm afraid my reviewing mojo did not put in an appearance. Ah well, never mind, at least I'm having a nice relaxing time off, even if I'm not quite reading as much as I'd hoped.

Books read from - Final Demand by Deborah Moggach

Pages read - 96

Reviews written - 0

Running Total - Books: 4, Pages: 1443

Saturday

Sorry for the lateness of my update. I didn't get home until 4 o clock this morning (Sunday) after a night of Eurovision-based shenanigans so, as you can imagine, I slept on late today (well, afternoon actually!) Apart from being out all evening, yesterday was a day of getting boring jobs done (car to garage, apply for new driving licence, baked a cake, food shopping, cleaning,), so unfortunately very little reading was done. I just managed 40 pages of my latest read first thing yesterday morning. Pitiful, I know, but sometimes real life does get in the way. I Have Waited and You Have Come has got off to a promising start and, as it's pretty short, I should be able to get it finished in time for the end of the read-a-thon. This would bring my total books read to a respectable five, which isn't the seven I was hoping for, but has at least made a modest dent in my TBR. I also have next week off, so I should be able to read a few more before I have to go back to work. I do need to crack on with my reviews though, as so far I've only written one. That's worse than a normal week!

Books read from  - I Have Waited and You Have Come by Martine McDonagh

Pages read - 40

Reviews written - 0

Running Total - Books: 4, Pages: 1483

Sunday

Well, that was Bout of Books! My first but probably not my last, even though I didn't quite manage to hit my ambitious goals. I did finish I Have Waited and You Have Come but it's quite short so I only have another 134 pages to add to the total. And reviews... Oh, I don't know what's wrong with me lately, I seem to be finding reviews such a chore. I always used to love writing them so hopefully it's only temporary, but being off work makes me want to run away from anything that even vaguely feels like work at the moment. Does that make sense? Ah well, I don't know, maybe I need some time off from the blog - we'll see. Anyway, despite my reviewing rubbishness, I did enjoy all the reading, so thanks to the hosts of Bout of Books for making it such a lovely event.

Books read -1

Pages read - 134

Reviews written - 0

Running Total - Books: 5, Pages: 1647

A Diary of The Lady by Rachel Johnson

For those of you that may not know it, The Lady is an ancient English magazine read by old ladies of a certain class. It's one of the last remaining places where you might find advertisements for nannies, housekeepers and under butlers, and its pages were always filled with dull articles about trees, basket weaving and the royal family. I bought it once, many years ago, when I wanted to rent a holiday cottage (I found a gorgeous little croft in the Outer Hebrides - thank you, Lady), but I don't think I've ever met anyone under seventy who would admit to reading The Lady regularly. 

Then I chanced across this book and realised that a) the old magazine is still out there and b) in a last ditch hope to revive the poor old thing they've given it a bit of a shake-up. The person they chose for the job was Rachel Johnson, who I had only vaguely heard of as Boris's sister, but I thought her memoir of her first year at the magazine might be worth a read. It definitely was.

Print media is having a very turbulent time at the moment as more and more readers turn to online (and mostly free) sources for their entertainment. Columnists are losing work at an alarming rate and when Rachel Johnson first got the call from The Lady she was staring unemployment in the face. A job she might otherwise have never thought of doing suddenly became very attractive, but she soon realised that the venerable Lady's readers were all dying off at an alarming rate, and this was the worst possible time to try and attract new ones.

Rachel's account of her first impressions of the Lady office, which appeared to have changed little in the last century, was very funny. Tea was served in china cups and saucers, a mad old uncle lived in the attic, the staff had all been there for decades and crisp white tea towels were everywhere. A modern woman like Rachel Johnson, with radical ideas like changing the covers, inviting real journalists to submit exciting new articles and even *gasp* changing the logo, was always going to clash with the old guard. 

The Lady is owned by the Budworth family, with Ben Budworth its proprietor and Rachel's direct boss, though his domineering and slightly unhinged mother makes her presence felt on a regular basis, and her frequent mad rants are quite hilarious. Rachel certainly didn't have an easy time of it, but she has a genuine fondness for all the old fossils at The Lady, even as she tries to gently steer them into the 21st century. My favourite feature of the book is the rundown she gives of her in tray, which is always bursting with interesting freebies (usually edible), terrible articles with hopeful covering letters, and missives from irate octogenarian readers who are outraged at most of the changes Rachel is trying to bring in.

If the book had concentrated entirely on The Lady, its staff and readers I'm sure this would have been a five star read. However, unfortunately we also had to wade through Rachel Johnson's dreary tales of celebrity parties and weekends with the rich and famous, which seemed little more than a chance for her to drop a multitude of names and show us all how important and popular she was. I found this a huge turn off and such a shame, because when she showed less of herself and more of the wonderful characters at The Lady, the book was really excellent and very funny.

The book describes a documentary that was made as Rachel Johnson took The Lady's helm, and after reading this I really would like to watch it. I feel quite affectionate towards The Lady myself now, and who knows, when I'm old enough I might even start reading it too.

The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets by Kathleen Alcott

I think it was the title that first attracted me to this novel, but as soon as I started it I knew I was going to enjoy it. Kathleen Alcott's writing style is excellent - literary, beautiful, but easy to settle into, and this tale of love gone wrong was just the thing to show off her skills.

The book is narrated by Ida, who tells us of her childhood and the boy she has always loved. As tiny babies, Ida and Jackson would cry if they were parted, and they grew up closer than twins. Their parents were neighbours, and Ida would spend as much time at Jackson's house, with him and his brother James, as she would at her own, with her widowed father.

As children, Ida would often share a bedroom with Jackson and James, and there she witnessed the brothers sleep-talking. They would hold strange conversations in their dreams, and Ida felt the first prickles of exclusion as she realised the brothers shared something while they slept that she could never be a part of. As they grew older Ida and Jackson's relationship blossomed into a deep, but flawed, co-dependant love. Jackson progressed to sleep-walking, often performing complex tasks while asleep and scaring Ida and James who would follow behind and try to keep him out of trouble. They wouldn't always succeed.

Ida is very needy, quite whiny, and I can see why Jackson got fed up with her. Her love is stifling, and she doesn't appreciate that Jackson might have his own ideas about how he wants to run his life. Then there's Jackson himself who, considering he's supposed to be a main character, hardly gets to say anything. The book is all about Ida and the feelings she projects onto Jackson, we can guess how he might feel but we never really get to see the other side.

My favourite character was James, the younger brother whose whole life is coloured by the Great Love Story that has played out in front of his eyes since before he could talk. He struggles with addiction, and later with mental illness, and we wonder how different things might have been if Ida had turned to him instead, or even if she had not existed at all.

Of course it all goes wrong for Ida and Jackson, though we have to wait until quite late on in the book to see how it happened. What we do know is that Ida is utterly devastated by the split, and almost incapable of living without Jackson by her side. The greater the love, the worse the despair when it ends, and for Ida it's very bad indeed.

I did enjoy reading about Ida's father and Jackson's mother, who initially dislike each other, but eventually forge a relationship of their own from the ruins of their children's breakup. Ida's father, in particular, is a fascinating character; wounded by the loss of his wife, befuddled by parenthood, but with a genuine wish to do the right thing and bring his daughter up properly.

I did find the book's ending a little abrupt, and I would have liked to have known what the future held for these characters. Ida wasn't always a sympathetic narrator, but on the whole I was impressed by this debut novel. Four stars.

Bout of Books starts tomorrow

At last the fortnight off work I've been so looking forward to is here, and I'm planning to spend a very large part of it reading. Bout of Books has come at the perfect time, and I'm going to set myself some pretty ambitious goals in the hope that it will encourage me to make some serious inroads into my TBR. 

At the moment I'm just under halfway through The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I'd really like to get that finished tonight so I can start Bout of Books with a clean slate tomorrow. Then my bookshelves are my oyster really; there are so very many books I want to read that it almost seems pointless doing a stack, but stacks are fun so I'll do one anyway!

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

Doughnut by Tom Holt

Tideline by Penny Hancock

Perfect People by Peter James

Ferney by James Long

The Machine by James Smythe

The Observations by Jane Harris

Sun Dog by Monique Roffey

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Secrets of the Tides by Hannah Richell

Those are the books that look down at me especially insistently from their shelves, but there's every chance I might pick a bunch of completely different books when it comes down to it. I'm on holiday, after all, and I want to be free to read whatever takes my fancy at the time.

As for goals; well, it's ambitious but I think it can be done. In the seven days of Bout of Books, I'm going to try and read seven books, and write their reviews! I'm getting behind on reviews and it bothers me, as I usually find my reviews are much better when I do them quickly. So I'm going to try and keep my reviewing at the same pace as my reading (well actually it needs to be a little faster, as I shall have three reviews to write even before I start the read-a-thon). We shall see how that goes; I'm hopeful but I know how easy it is to fall behind when you're reading quickly.

I shall be around on Twitter during Bout of Books, and I hope to take part in at least one of the Twitter chats, as they always look so much fun. I'm looking forward to getting started.

Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence

Back in the 1980s, in the days before YA was a thing, there was a spate of rather scary, very British nuclear dystopias aimed at a teenage audience. Chief among these were Robert Swindells' Brother in the Land, and this terrifying book by Louise Lawrence. 

It's hard to imagine now how it felt at the time, growing up in a world where there was every possibility your life would be obliterated with one push of a red button. I was utterly terrified by the prospect of nuclear war as a child, and yet strangely fascinated too, and I would seek out anything on TV or in books that had nuclear annihilation as its theme. Children of the Dust is one of many books I read, aged about thirteen, with fear in the pit of my stomach. That old fascination with nuclear disaster has never quite left me and I thought it would be interesting to re-read this as an adult and see if it inspired any of the same feelings as it did back when Andropov was the world's scariest man.

The book follows three generations in the time during and immediately after a catastrophic nuclear war. Sarah is a teenage girl who finds herself at home with her stepmother and two younger siblings when the bomb drops. Despite an awkward relationship, she and her stepmother must pull together to try and protect the children from the horrors to come. They must find food and fresh water and try to keep the radioactive fallout from coming into their home, causing sickness, and later death. 

The second part of the book follows a different group of people, who were lucky enough to be safe inside a bunker when the bomb dropped. Ophelia knows no other life, having been born just after war broke out, and the community inside the shelter are using science to try and find a way to return the world to the same state it was before the bombs came. They try to grow crops again, but the land is too toxic and their once plentiful supplies are running out. Their sheltered life has not prepared them for the harsh realities of the post-nuclear world, and they are going to need to implement some radical changes to their whole way of thinking if they are to survive.

This book is seriously bleak, and it's no wonder it scared and depressed me as a teen. Yet, there is hope in the final chapters, albeit an unrealistic and rather far-fetched one to my now adult eyes. Louise Lawrence was surely a member of CND at the time, and there is a slightly preachy tone throughout the novel that indicates that she was hoping to win some new young converts to her cause. It is compelling, and has some interesting ideas which pitch the book firmly into science fiction territory. However, it's a product of it's time, and I'm not sure that today's teens would be as horrified and transfixed by it as I was in the 1980s. It's was fun to revisit, but I think I'll be putting the book back on Ebay for someone else to enjoy again.

Sexually I'm More of a Switzerland by David Rose

My designated dipper-inner for last weekend’s read-a-thon was this brilliant collection of lonely hearts advertisements from the London Review of Books. Judging by this book, the readers of the London Review are a highly intelligent but socially awkward bunch, with a keen sense of humour and very low self esteem. These ads are absolute gems.

To give you a flavour you'll need to see a few examples, and these were three of my favourites:

If you think I'm going to love you - you're right. Clingy, over-emotional and socially draining woman, 36. Once you've got me you can never ever leave me. Not ever. Prone to maniacal bursts of crying, usually followed by excitable and uncontrollable laughter. Life is a roller coaster; you've just got to ride it, as Ronan Keating once said. Buxton. Box no. 0617.

I could fit into a 42-inch-waist trouser if I sucked in a little. Pathetic man, mid eighties (G.I. value of typical breakfast), mid fifties (temperature after walking upstairs), 143 (heart rate after walking upstairs), 38 (minutes before coming around after walking upstairs, and my age). WLTM patient F in a bungalow. Box no. 0295.

Forward this personal ad to ten friends. Otherwise bad luck will befall you. Poison pen lady (32, Staffs). Box no. 4675 

We imagine David Rose, closeted in a tiny office where he receives calls from lonely academics and lovelorn eggheads, helping them craft their forlorn adverts for a mate. In the Internet age, the old-fashioned postal advert is something of an anachronism, but somehow it seems to suit the eccentrics who write these, and you can't imagine any of these people coping with Internet dating!

The book is divided into several chapters which group the adverts loosely by theme, and each page contains numerous footnotes to explain anything that might conceivably be unclear. There's even a bizarre yet strangely fascinating appendix at the back which lists every winner of the Miss World beauty contest since 1951, with odd little titbits of information about each one. 

Sexually I'm More of a Switzerland is the second volume of personal ads from the London Review of Books, and though I've never read the first (called They Call Me Naughty Lola), I'd be happy to pick up a copy after having enjoyed these so much. This isn't the sort of book you'd want to read straight through, but it's perfect for dipping in and out of to give you a quick laugh in spare moments. Four stars.