A glamorous update of Wilde’s classic for The Pretty Little Liars generation.
Let’s cut to the chase – The Picture of Dorian Gray remains one of my favourite novels, so I started reading this out of curiosity more than anything else. The themes of appearance and how we portray ourselves, and the extent to which we are judged for our outward actions remain pertinent. For the modern social media-obsessed teenager, this is likely to appeal on a number of levels, but I’d still urge them to read Wilde’s book if they want to go beyond the surface of the key ideas explored.
I found the setting of the novel appropriately close and unsettling. The girls being tucked away in a well-to-do Academy provides the ideal setting for them to experiment with their identities in relative safety, yet show in detail the intricate webs that are woven to keep their social hierarchies firmly established.
Our Queen Bee in this novel – Heidi – is suitably shallow and vacuous. Her adoption of Doreen is vital to the plot – and Doreen grows into a perfect monster as she succumbs to the hedonistic pleasures that her new-found prettiness brings her.
The actual style of writing was confident, but the mix of Wildean-style prose with more modern dialogue did not sit well with me. The lack of any attempt to provide an explanation for the occurrence with the picture frustrated me, but it will definitely have enough to entertain many readers.