Reviews with content warning for Addiction - The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

106 reviews

may_thorne's review against another edition

3.0

Content Warnings

bonradinfinite's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

claire_leibovitz's review against another edition

3.75

mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

elliptica's review against another edition

3.75

dark reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

lovingblackcat's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

mizzouatheart's review against another edition

4.75

dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

danielliang's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was constantly enthralled in Oscar Wilde’s writing. This is a book that is very hard to put down because it is filled with only thought provoking or otherwise interesting lines; I found that the amount of character in each line was so potent you almost could drop all the dialogue tags and still know who is speaking. It was wonderful to try and dissect all the layers of meaning behind each line. I am realizing that this review sounds really pretentious, but I just finished the book and it is very late at night; leave me alone.

Half a star off because I found chapter eleven to be genuinely such a bore.

Content Warnings

chasinggrace's review against another edition

3.0

reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Look, I know this is a beloved story. I slept on my review too so I wouldn’t be too rash, but I have to say: this was mid. I was expecting more from such an iconic story.

Pros:

For the first third of the story, I appreciated the “flowery” language (that’s a pun - if you’ve read this, you know Wilde was quite obsessed with describing the surrounding flora in ever scene. Purposeful? Probably. Useful? Debatable).
Lord Henry was characterized well, and I think how you interpret his dialogue truly impacts your impression of his character. I read him with a perpetual light-hearted sarcasm, which is to say that I didn’t take a single thing he said seriously. He characterized the shallow Brit exceptionally well, especially when he made his comments about class. He forces you to stop and think, “do I agree with what he’s saying, or is he just speaking with such pomp that I tend to agree with him based solely off of the confidence with which he speaks?”
The amount of times characters flopped on couches was hilarious to me. They were always flinging themselves to and fro, it really added to the drama of it all.
Characters descending into true madness is fascinating to me, always.

Cons:

Where this story fell apart from me was what seems to happen off-page. Wilde focuses so intently on setting or history or flippant dialogue between characters, but doesn’t spend nearly enough time focusing on what Gray is actually DOING. In the latter half, years and years pass by where we are just told that Gray is being a dick - he’s following Lord Henry’s belief system and living a debaucherous life. But we don’t SEE IT, and that’s where Wilde lost me. If you’re going to critique good vs bad, if we are going to debate what makes or breaks a soul, if we are going to have conversations of morality, then let’s actually see the “bad” things he does so we can form our own opinions! Instead, we just have to trust that he’s become vapid and treats people poorly because he is living without physical consequences. That was a huge miss for me.
For most of the novel, that picture is degrading in the attic off-page. I think it would have been a much more interesting experiment if, every time Gray did something, he ran to go check the portrait. We would have been able to better measure the degradation of his mind as he debated internally about what the painting was telling him. But again, this was missed with the time jumps.
The gender hypocrisy was very heavy-handed. One could argue that it was purposeful, but given the timeframe that this story was written, I think it is just a reflection of how men actually thought of women. Multiple times, women were characterized as overly romantic, shallow, and vapid. But the ENTIRE STORY centers men who want to do nothing but romanticize their life based off of being beautiful and observing beautiful things.
Also, trigger warning for blatant antisemitism.
Was Gray born a narcissist or was he made into one? Either way, this man seriously lacked empathy for others and I don’t know if it can all be blamed on Lord Henry’s influence.
My favorite character died and that pissed me off.

Maybe I just need to stop reading about privileged men in high British society, because the way they love the sound of their own voice is CRAZY.

Content Warnings