The Man Who Was Dorian Gray

by Jerusha Hull McCormack

A biography of the real Dorian Gray introduces fans of the Oscar Wilde novel to the real working-class youth who served as a model for the story's main character.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

353 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2000

Reviews

[Bri Lamb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more than I did in the end. The premise excited me, as The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books. While I found the information, facts, and timeline interesting, I also found it very disjointed and jarring. McCormack explains in the prologue how past and present would mix in the story, and how footnote quotes would be in quotations. This did not prepare me for the unorganized content of the book. Tenses mixed together, the dialogue which should have had quotations did not (and was bunched in with the rest of the paragraph) and lengthy tangents ran wild derailing the main plot. The author included a lot of information which I thought was unnecessary especially towards the end. The perspective also seemed to shift at times from 1st to 3rd person often in the middle of paragraphs. I would have enjoyed it a lot more, I think, if it were written in a different style. I will award it an extra 1/2 star though, for truly pulling me in at some parts.