visorforavisor's reviews
33 reviews

As a quick note beforehand: I acknowledge and do not approve of Wilde’s use of negative stereotypes of Jewish people in this.

The last time I read this, I knew next to nothing about the meaning of it in the context of the intense homophobia of the late-19th-century UK. But, reading it now, I realise how brave Oscar Wilde was to publish this. I quote from the original, uncensored version, Basil speaking to Dorian:

“It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. […] I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. […] Of course I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it. […] But, as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. There was love in every line, and in every touch there was passion. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.”

And this is just one of the most blatant examples, one that had to be cut. There aren’t “homoerotic undertones” in Dorian. There is no “gay subtext”. It’s. About homosexuality. The whole book is about homosexuality. Even that bit at the start, about judging a book on its morality vs judging it on how well-written it is; what, it’s a coincidence that everyone ignored a beautifully written book because its gayness went against their morals?

All three couples possible between Dorian, Basil, and Henry are implied to have existed. Dorian almost certainly had a beyond-platonic relationship with Alan, who he later blackmails (a crime that comes later than murder, even as we know that his crimes become worse and worse… absolutely nothing [/s] to do with blackmail being the primary crime against gay men in this era, especially since we aren’t told what the blackmail material is, but we are told about Alan and Dorian’s “intimacy”). Dorian is repeatedly compared to male favourites of kings. He goes to a costume ball, in drag, dressed as a male favourite of Henri III of France. (Was it just chance that this is a similar name to Henry Wotton’s? Probably not.) Dorian owns homes, in which he and Henry holiday together, in known homosexual hotspots. He also attends brothels in an area known for its brothels having men for hire.

Dorian, thinking about how Basil’s affection and good nature could have saved him:

The love that he bore him — for it was really love — had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.

All the men named had homosexual relationships, and Wilde knew this. Compare with Wilde’s speech, in court, for the crime of homosexuality:

“The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name”, and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

(It’s worth noting that while Wilde does emphasise the younger and older men being in a relationship together, he’s not talking about paedophilia: Dorian is 20 when the story begins, and Henry 30. Basil’s age is unknown but he and Henry are simoultaneously called “young”, so he is probably between the two in age.)

This speech of Wilde’s, pretty much, sums up the relationship of Dorian with the combination of Basil and Henry. In the first chapters, Dorian does have “all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him”. References to some of the same men not only continue to show parallels between these passages but make it absolutely undebatable that Wilde was saying Basil was gay. The similar use of the words “noble” and “intellectual”, all of it.

Dorian Gray is arguing on behalf of homosexuality.

Oh, this was a good one.

Queen of the Tiles was just what I needed to get me back into mystery. A murder story set at a Scrabble tournament in Malaysia. Najwa was the perfect hero: unsure of her own memory, desperately devoted to deceased best friend Trina Low, and sharply intelligent. The narration’s opinions on Mark, Josh, Puteri, Yasmin, Shuba, Singapore Ben, and everyone else were fantastic fun to read, and the entire thing felt so real.

This was an absolute page-turning, couldn’t-put-it-down, heart-pounding book. Hanna Alkaf is a brilliant writer.

I don’t know if I can ever adequately express how perfect this book is. I was diagnosed autistic at 16 and am now 18, well beyond the intended age range for A Kind of Spark.

The thing is, though, I was once an autistic 11-year-old. Even if I didn’t know it, I was that. And to see the bullying I received actually represented, and presented as bad, and to see the way that neurotypicals are just so totally unreasonable so much of the time, and… I cried.

Keedie saying that her and Addie’s autism is “mild because we make it so”, and that it’s not mild to them, is so powerful and true, especially for someone like me who has been masking for their entire life (as in, nobody has ever seen my base level, so my base level is assumed to be much more normal than it is). I loved the discussion of Keedie’s difficulties at university, and the way that comment sections tend to respons when online vloggers and the like put up a video with an autistic family member. I thought that the parallels the book posed between witch trials and the sectioning of autistic people were very poignant and accurate.

And unreasonable teachers. Oh yeah, I’ve had a few. They were like Ms Murphy.

Books like this will not only teach autistic and otherwise neurodivergent 11-year-olds that they are the heroes of stories, but will also teach neurotypical 11-year-olds that autistics are heroes. Elle McNicoll and all of the authors like her are doing wonderful things for the next generation of kids like me.