The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, narrated by Stephen Fry

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Genre: Literature & Fiction

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Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Narration: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This was a bit of a tough one to rate. While we can see why it was terrifying and scandalous in the late Victorian era, it isn’t a thriller or suspense novel any more. It remains very topical, delving into how malignant narcissism and refusal to take responsibility affect society. It’s probably because modern society is awash in these problems that the tale has lost its horror; modern readers are desensitized to it. We are still glad we finally read it because it deserves its place in the Western canon. It’s a novel you can nerd out over, so you’ll enjoy if you’re always analyzing the shit out of texts. It also hit home for us as a lesson in clearly seeing people. If we were a character in the story, we’d be Basil, the good-hearted artist who paints Dorian Gray’s portrait. He views everyone in the best light possible and stays loyal, even after Dorian is cruel to him multiple times. At the beginning of the book Basil says Dorian is like a spoilt little boy who never grew up. Basil thinks this means Dorian is pure and untouched. He thinks it’s charming. But he’s blinded by his love (we totally get ace demiromantic vibes from Basil). Over the course of the novel we see that his throwaway comment was quite incisive and if Basil had been able to set aside love’s rose-colored glasses, he’d have seen Dorian’s flaws clearly, before the portrait ever comes into the picture. Time and again Dorian’s victims see only his beautiful surface because it is what they want to see. Only when it is too late do they clearly see his callous, depraved, and prideful nature. 😔

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Rating the narration was easy, though. We are glad we went with Stephen Fry’s narration. His wry wit added layers to the story and his voice is always a pleasure to listen to. We deducted one star because in a few places we couldn’t tell who was talking, but these were minor blips in the performance. 

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Content warnings:

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Major: toxic relationships, manipulation, misogyny

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Moderate: drugs, blood, violence

Our first read for @adventuryn_ ‘s #readlgbtqpride reading challenge didn’t live up to the hype. To be fair, we were feeling crappy, so we gave it 2 stars (or buttons) instead of 1 to make up for that. We will start with the positives. Overall a positive message and should be great for elementary through middle grade readers. We loved the dressmaker Frances’ designs. Each chapter starts with a pattern piece, and we think they are actually in the order one would sew them, which is a nice touch. The color palette is beautiful! But while it wasn’t “Thou offendest mine eyes!” bad, we didn’t like the art style. Possibly because we didn’t realize going in that this was aimed at middle grade readers, we expected a more sophisticated plot. It’s very...expected and just left us feeling meh. Moderate CW for homophobia/transphobia. 

We would classify The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey as a cozy mystery that just happens to be set in 1920s Bombay. Think the legal maneuvering of David Rosenfeldt’s Andy Carpenter series with the small town feel of Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy series, all infused with the delicious flavors of India.

The main character, Perveen Mistry, is based on the first female lawyer in India. We really enjoyed watching her use the law to fight for justice where only she can: within a Muslim household’s zenana. We also enjoyed watching her grow as she becomes more competent, takes on new challenges, and learns to work around the constraints society places on her. The characters in the story kept us hooked – for the most part.

Sadly there were some sections where the book started to drag and it felt like we were slogging through the doldrums. We enjoyed the rest of the book so much that it thoroughly aggravates us that Massey chose to include the chapters set in 1917.

At first we assumed that there would be a connection between Cyrus, the love interest featured in these chapters, and the murder in 1920. Spoiler: Cyrus is a Chekhov’s gun. We really have no idea why the author thought it was necessary to include him at all.

It feels like the 1917 chapters are Massey preaching to the reader about how awful things were for women in Bombay. These chapters should’ve hit the cutting room floor, or at the least been massively condensed. Take our advice and skip the 1917 chapters. It will significantly improve your reading experience.

But we still loved the book enough to read it four out of five stars and buy the sequel.Perveen, her father Jamshadji, and her friend Alice are all characters we definitely want to spend more time with. We also love the vivid pictures Massey paints of life in Bombay with the wide variety of cultures and their clashes with British colonialism. She uses just the right salting of languages like Hindi to add authentic detail without confusing readers who don’t know these terms – Especially important in an audiobook when we didn’t know how to spell the non-English words in order to look them up.

Soneela Nankani does an excellent job of narrating. She gives slightly different accents to characters from different cultures and has a pleasant voice. She never seems to stumble over non-English words.while some reviewers found it difficult to keep track of who is who, we had no trouble tracking who was speaking. While we appreciate the energy Nankani brings to the narration, after a while we noticed that she seems to give every sentence an astonished feeling, which does become annoying. We noticed that Audible switches narrators with the sequel. We usually hate it when they do this, but perhaps Sneha Mathan’s narration will not suffer from the constant astonishment problem.

A Word to the Wise (Content Warnings)

Major: Domestic violence; sexism, misogyny, and colonialism/racism appropriate to the period; toxic family dynamics; manipulation/gaslighting; religious abuse.

Moderate: Assault, alcoholism, kidnapping, child abuse, violence, homophobia, heteronormativity.

Minor: Brief mention of blood, incest.

TL;DR

We already consider the Asian Readathon a success because we found a new series to love. The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey is a book anyone who loves a good cozy legal mystery with a plucky heroine should try. we are already looking forward to book two!

Full mini review here https://rosemerrywrites.wordpress.com/2021/05/05/gitanjali-by-rabindranath-tagore-mini-review/