A new favorite classic of mine. I would have not picked this up for a good while because classics and I don't do mesh. I find them tedious and frustrating to read. I listened to this on audiobook and the wonderful Ben Barnes who played Dorian Gray in the adaptation narrated this and it made listening to it much more enjoyable.
To begin, this story did not go the way I expected. I knew going in that Dorian gray stays young while his picture grows old. But it's his bad deeds and sins that make the portrait age. He has his portrait done by a man who is one of his dearest friends and tries to get him to stay away from the main man who influences Dorian to be scandalous, do drugs and live life with pure debauchery.
The artist Basil is amazing and when he shows Dorian the final piece, Dorian immediately hates it and becomes jealous of it because he will grow old and the portrait will stay the same forever. Lord Henry aka Mr. Bad Influence runs off at the mouth and puts thoughts into Dorians head making Dorian wish to stay young forever while the portrait changes.
Overtime, Dorian meets a young actress named Sybil Vale and he becomes infatuated with her. She has many parts in the play Romeo and Juliet. He is obsessed with how she acts and when Dorian brings his friends to the play, Sybil deliberately does a horrible job and embarrasses Dorian. Dorian gets upset and leaves her and she ends up killing herself. That is when Dorian starts noticing things going wrong with the portrait.
Immediately after reading this, I watched the adaptation. I ended up loving the movie and being freaked the fuck out because of the amount of creepiness they put into the portrait and I love how they went into more detail about the Hellfire Club that Henry Wooten was a part of.
I know that this will be a classic that I will be rereading in the future and I will also be rewatching the movie again.
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