About book Oscar Wilde And A Death Of No Importance: A Mystery (2008)
Knowing of Gyles Brandreth from the television and radio, I rather thought this book might be a little “sophisticated” for me. He’s a vastly intelligent man and, like Stephen Fry, he often loses me with his mind but I needn’t have worried, because The Candlelight Murders(as it's known in the UK) is an enjoyable – almost frothy – murder mystery of the old school and thoroughly enjoyable.It’s obvious from the word go that Brandreth is a big fan of Oscar Wilde and he sets the scene well. The books are narrated from the Point of View of Robert Sherrad, a real life friend of Wilde’s, and right at the beginning Robert makes it clear that although he loved Oscar, he was not his lover. The narration style is worthy of Watson, bumbling a good 20 steps behind the genius of Wilde as he burns his way across the page, leaving epithets and witticisms in his wake – believably so, as Brandreth explains that he would trial his “stock phrases” on his friends and relations before using them in his published works.Oscar is totally believable, you can almost visualise him, almost believe that Brandreth had spent time with the great man, because he’s portrayed here in all of his greatness and his ambivalence. His love for his family and his wife is clear and yet the darker side of his life is never glossed over, not completely. It is clear that Sherrad knows of his predilections and they threaten to break through at any time.I enjoyed this particularly because I grew up with Sayers and with Christie, I love romping through a book, catching some of the same clues as the detective and feeling smug, but I also love being led down a blind alley and being throughly duped by a clever writer. This doesn’t achieve that totally, not – for example – in the same magnificence as “Ten Little Niggers” did, or “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”, because I actually realised what was going on a couple of chapters towards the end. But it did a damned good job and once started it was impossible to put down.The period detail is spectacularly well done, the demimonde feel of the fin-de-siecle cities, the descriptions of Oscar’s house, the dinner parties and most intriguingly the group of men who love boys is perfectly expressed. The cast of characters, ranging from the aesthetes to the grotesque as wonderfully drawn and suit the era and the darker undercurrents exactly.Anyone who loves a good murder mystery will love this, and the homoerotic sublayers add even more flavour.
3.5 starsI will wait for Jeannette, Marialyce and Dawn before post my review. However, since I always avoid spoilers in my reviews, see my review as followed.Even if I am not a big fan of mysteries featuring real literary authors, I liked this one.In my opinion, the author managed quite well to balance between quoting famous artists & writers with a mystery case as background.Among the citations, we can mention some of these well known names, such as: Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes, Watson), Robert Sherard, Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, Thomas Huxley, Émile Zola, Mrs. O’Keefe (Georgia), Walter Scott, Madame Tussaud, Euripides, Plato, Madame Rostand (an old Wilde's passion), Gustave Eiffel, Louis Pasteur, Jerome K. Jerome, Wagner, Millais, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Byron, Wordsworth, John Keats, Doré and Tenniel. Certainly, I must forgot to mention some other names.Some interesting quotations:Page 5:"Life is the nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.”Page 48:"Science “is nothing but trained and organised common sense", by Thomas Huxley.Page 72:"Fidelity is over-rated, Robert,” I heard him say. “It is loyalty that counts—and understanding.”Page 82:“Actors are so fortunate,” Oscar wrote to me in a letter once. “They can choose whether they appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. There are no choices. All the world’s a stage, but we must play as we are cast.”Page 107:“This happens to be my birthday, Robert, and on each of my anniversaries I mourn the flight of one year of my youth into nothingness, the growing blight upon my summer…Tempus fugit inreparabile!”Page 110:“To win back my youth,” Oscar continued, unabashed, “there is nothing I would not do—except, of course, take exercise, rise early, or give up alcohol.”Page 148:“There is no friendship possible between men and women, Robert. Remember that. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”Page 190:“‘Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid.’”The truth is, a poet can survive anything but a misprint—but is Oxford the place for the truth?Page 264:‘Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.’”Page 288:“Prayers must never be answered, Robert! If prayers are answered, they cease to be prayers and become correspondence…”
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Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders is skilfully written and much in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's works. The story takes place in 1889-1890, revolving around the murder of a young friend of Oscar Wilde. As a rule and from past bad experiences, I try to avoid reading books with real-life personalities as characters. I don't know why I took exception at this book (though it might have something to do with the absolutely disgusting and charming front cover...)I said previously that it was written in the style of Conan Doyle, which is true, yet Gyles Brandreth manages to keep it sounding authentic while not making it a struggle for the average modern-day reader. He keeps his main character grounded in the realms of attainable intelligence, and Wilde is shown as a wonderful, complex yet flawed human, making him more tangible than Sherlock Holmes ever was.The character we see through is another real-life person, a poet, womaniser and great-grandson of Wordsworth - Oscar Wilde's best friend, Robert Sherard. The story is a fictional memoir of Sherard, so told in first-person and past-tense, and Brandreth's skilled touch gives the reader a delicious closeness to Wilde.The book started, I think, too much like a Sherlock mystery, as Wilde amazes everyone with his deductions, as well as Conan Doyle (yet another non-fictional character). This does wane as the plot evolves.The characters are lush and breathe off the page, the plot rarely slowing until the end where every question is answered in an elegant and satisfying bow. I am defiantly buying the second, Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death and I really hope it will have a similar, equally vulgar and delightful cover as the first.
—Nadir
Read this on holiday with no access to internet - hence no review at time of reading and only a few words due to having read several others (literary jumble!).Didn't really expect to enjoy this to be honest but it's such a lovely easy read with a bunch of well known (and well worn) characters. Some great Wilde quotes in here along with a few 'new' ones which I'm sure he would have been proud of.A good little mystery, fully deserves the 4 stars and will probably find myself reading more in the series.
—Tony
"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it." OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as ArtistA thoroughly delightful book, in large part because it starts with history and re-writes it. Much of this book (as detailed in the author's biographical notes) is based on fact, but Brandreth (the author) decides to spice up history a bit. What if a young male companion and pupil of Oscar Wilde was found murdered? What if Wilde, his friend the poet Robert Sherard, and his new acquaintance Arthur Conan Doyle decided to investigate the murder? What is Wilde had the perceptiveness of Sherlock Holmes so that small clues led to major discoveries? None of this (probably) happened, but it is just plausible enough to make for an entertaining historical mystery (or mysterious history).
—Michael Halpern
