in all my years of loving the dorian gray story, i've never actually read the book. and i'm kicking myself in the shin that i didn't read it sooner. i've always imagined dorian gray only as a snarky suave victorian fuckboy as i've seen with the beautiful ben barnes and in penny dreadful. to my surprise, he's a cherubic doe-eyed 20-something year old probably with that k-beauty glass skin WHICH MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. yes dorian's vanity consumes him and he turns into a raging asshole like his beloved incel-blueprint henry but the corruption of pure innocence makes him (dare i say) a tragic character. in fact there's a really great post from CatherB (et al) discussing this corruption and drawing a good connection to the modern political sphere. after reading this, i feel dorian's main driving emotion is fear - fear of losing attention and power (through aging), fear of feeling hollow (queue the heavy hedonistic themes). basically victorian fomo. which is so interesting and so unlike the shallow dorian gray i thought i knew.

i really need to make a point to read more classical works because this was beautifully written. as with many classics, it's much more of a talking book (vs. a doing book) but the talking is so rich. it's dense and not my preferred writing style but many times after a passage i had to put the book down to digest it or was in awe of how it drew parallels (good and bad) to today. there's so much of this obsession with youth that i can still see anywhere from influencer culture to "the substance". youth and the power of beauty and the lengths people will go to achieve/maintain; it's the same thing 100+ years later but just a slightly different font. and even though the vapid sections were a bit too much for my liking, i was still able to pull meaning from them.

oscar wilde was not perfect that's FOR SURE and he did some inexcusable things, but i learned about his story and how the homoerotic subtext in dorian gray was pointed to as part of the evidence for his imprisonment and subsequent exile. it's easy to giggle about basil's obvious googly-eyed crush and call dorian gray a material girl, but a part of me does grieve for wilde's struggles in life and how it all turned out for him. through dorian gray i can see his love of beautiful things and ultimately his loneliness. it sad that something he put out into the world as a partial mirror of himself was ultimately used against him.

all in all, love this book. gonna go play layers of fear now to draw out the "art horror" genre as long as i can.

ok now that i got the obligatory ratatouille gif out of the way...

first off, big shout out to sharky_97 for a really out of pocket find and igniting perhaps one of my favorite forums. love or hate it, there's no question it corralled the community; sharing books and having fun with it, isn't that what PB is all about?!

on to the book itself - how 🇫🇷 french 🇫🇷 was this? equal parts a sexual fever dream and a surprisingly beautiful foray into purpose and the human condition. was it insane? yeah absolutely. but was it also touching, bittersweet, and heartbreaking with powerful themes of transformation, freedom, longing, and religious parallels? weirdly also yes. it felt complete, and almost like a kafka/romero&juliet love child. i really have no qualms from a storytelling perspective, it cleanly balanced the most ridiculous and serious parts to the point where i was like "lobster orgy? oh yeah sure that makes sense." i think a lot of this will stay with me in some capacity, even if its just the fact that bay leaves will forever be changed in my eyes. i never knew what those mystical cardboard things actually did to a soup. perhaps they are the beholders of lobster's ravenous sexuality and the power to rearrange dicks animorphs style? maybe i should give them some more respect here on out.

all jokes aside, i'm usually not one for more absurd premises, but i can honestly say i enjoyed this - i laughed, i cried, i said wtf. but hey it gripped me more than a lot of books i've read this year so there's certainly something to be said about that.

in closing, bring on the dancing lobsters

i have a lot of (positive) thoughts about this that i'm having trouble coalescing. it's a small but mighty little thing that brings up some very complex emotionally-charged topics that perhaps have been set at a low simmer in the world. i am the daughter of a chinese immigrant and a white multi-generational american and grew up in the suburbs of a predominately white town. i've been lucky to have grown up around very accepting supportive people; i cannot say i personally relate to a lot of the themes in this book but i acknowledge them and feel some kinship with this community (although i also feel very much on the outside of it). i think it's really important for me to gain awareness of these topics of race, immigration, assimilation, and type-casting not only for the asian part of me but also for the white part of me. i have no illusions that i am perfect (i'm the first to admit i'm far from it) and though i try to be as inclusive and accepting as i can, i'm sure i'm guilty of inadvertently propagating some of the sentiments this book is trying to break down. that's the beautiful thing about reading and sharing ideas/experiences, i truly believe it's helped me become a better more aware person. i can't even begin to comment on all the incredible topics but i think the last scene in the courthouse really sums it up well in a powerful succinct way. one little teeny tiny thing i want to acknowledge is the book was more of a description of topics and struggles vs a head on attempt to deep dive into them; i think this was a good responsible choice. these are impossible things to try solving in ~250 pages, awareness itself is just as important (and has proven it can be just as emotional to just put words to the feeling). it allows the reader to draw their own conclusions without feeling like they are having opinions and rhetoric shoved down their throats. i do admit i wasn't the biggest fan of the funky screenplay writing (kinda blending tv and reality that's confusing at first), but it just wasn't my cup of tea - it certainly was very creative, purposeful, and well-done. there's a number of heavy-hitting passages that either make you think or break your heart in two. ok brb gonna go give my mom a big ol hug now.