Someone Get Me Some Smelling Salts, Because I'm Horrified.

My first new year lesson to you, my dear little Blogflowers, is that just because a book has a picture of Oscar Wilde on the cover does not mean that it is going to be full of delight, wit and beautiful men making out with each other. What an utter disappointment.

No, I did not expect pornography from Gyles Brandreth’s novel, “Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance,” but maybe that would have helped liven up this otherwise dull mystery. It would seem that I never cease to be fooled by the clever marketing and synopsis writing of publishers. The book promised Oscar Wilde solving the murder of a beautiful young boy whore, along with the help of his dear friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This should have been manna from my deranged heaven. The only thing worse than a terrible novel is a terrible novel created from a quite clever idea. In the spirit of Wilde’s dramatic life and writing, let me offer you this overly dramatic and wailing lament to the tragedy that has befallen dear Wilde in the pages upon this novel. (This is the part where you should picture me fainting onto a chaise lounge with a frilly handkerchief to my forehead.) That horrid prison, where the great man was subjected to hard labor, could not have more successfully stripped him of his soul than the words within this novel.

The first thing that struck me was the presentation of Oscar Wilde. Yes, he was a fancy chap. He was known for his sense of style and aesthetics, a lover of poetry and art and beauty. In this novel, he is portrayed as a petulant child, moody, deceptive and manipulative, neurotic and almost mentally unstable at times. My historical knowledge of Wilde is minimal, so I will not try to argue a point as to his true persona. Speaking purely from my gut instinct, Brandreth’s Wilde irritated me. He came off as the sort of person I would make fun of, had he been in my creative writing workshop in college. You know who I’m talking about. The guy who wears a ponytail and doesn’t bathe because Hemingway didn’t and writes on Moleskine notebooks because Mark Twain did. Yes, that guy. A poser. Nearly every time the fictional Wilde encountered a new character, Brandreth made a point of mentioning how quickly Wilde’s fine speaking, nobility and grace, charmed his new friends. Perhaps the real Wilde might have, but not this Frankenstein creature, patched together from the dead pieces of previous authors. Byron’s club foot, perhaps, or Keats’ consumptive lungs. I’d say the only person this Wilde is charming is the waiter. I swear, he spent half the novel shoving food down his face. Brandreth must’ve been terribly hungry while writing this book because in every other sentence, he has Wilde beckoning his friends to join him for oysters and champagne or mutton or goose liver. Certainly Oscar Wilde lived a decadent life, but if you really wanted to talk that much about food, write a cookbook. Do not waste my time and sully the persona of one of my favorite authors while you’re at it!

Then there’s the little matter of Wilde’s sexual persuasion. Your humblest pardons if I have my Victorian authors confused, but I am quite certain Oscar Wilde was engaged in a homosexual love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. Honestly, I don‘t blame him. The guy makes Jude Law look like the dead squirrel my friend once stepped on in a gutter. Not only does this novel seem to suggest that Wilde never had any inappropriate relationships with men, but even makes the killer a secretly homosexual man, driven to murder after his own young lover is slain by his wife. The narrator goes on and on about how nervous it makes him that his dear friend Oscar should associate with the sort of fellow who likes to hang out with pretty young men. Thanks, but no thanks. My fluff reading should not make me feel obliged to make a political speech on my blog page about civil rights and stereotypical judgments.