Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Unusual Niece

Rating:
Summary: meaning without words...a wisp of a shadow
Review: How do you relate the life of someone who never stepped forward from the shadows of her disgraced uncle, Oscar Wilde? Someone who sparkled like a thousand shards of a broken mirror on a sunlit day?
Dolly was a wisp of a shadow, mesmerizing, bewitching permanently etching herself into onto one's memory with her mere presence. Those who knew her well, Janet Flanner, Natalie Barney, Honey Harris - true wordsmiths all- struggled to explain her enigmatic aura. Captivating, enchanting - adjectives repeated over and over in a vain attempt to eplain her effect on all she met.
Her magic was her brilliant conversation, her charming turn of phrase, the impermanence of flowing dialogue that she wouldn't or couldn't commit to paper. She lived and died in 'The Moment' nothing else mattered. Her flame burned bright and then was gone - a willing(?) or fated victim to excesses she could not (and would not) control and the ravages of a body aged long before its time. Suicide? accident? Murder? The myth and truth of 'Wilde' consumed her all the same.
This biography isn't linear because Dolly didn't live her life linearly. Her life was moments of sight and sound and fury that the author captures completely.
How do you truly explain the unexplainable? This book is at it's best a series of half glimpses, whispered hints, or even dim reflections in mirrors (Dolly hated mirrors)of someone so busy 'living in the moment' that after that glorious moment she was gone with only the faint trace of pleasure and grace.
And somehow all that works and works well, this book recreates her life so much more then a dry recording of droning facts could ever capture of such a glorious spirit. No such dullness For Dolly Wilde! I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Truly Milde
Review: I've read with some interest the previous reviews of "Truly Wilde," and am not at all surprised that the author and her book would inspire such diverse -- no, opposite -- responses in readers. In this review, I thought I would try to explore the reasons behind those responses, in others and in myself.

To be frank, it took me several months to work my way through this book, an amount of time I rarely dedicate -- or need to dedicate -- to any book on the first read (unless I'm being paid to read and review it!). I was frequently driven to verbal expressions of frustration with the repetitive, coy, repetitive, acrobatic, repetitive prose style used by the author. I would put the book down on the nightstand, swearing not to pick it up again.

Then curiosity would get the better of me. Dolly is, after all, a fascinating, complex person, one who clearly suffered personal, public, and familial demons with amazing grace, while failing to profit from the many natural advantages granted by her personality, wit, style and physical resemblance to her famous uncle. She had it all, yet she had nothing, and in fairness to her I somehow felt it important to keep reading and, thus, pay tribute to her place in history.

And in fairness to the author, her prose is often brilliant. Whether or not she sat down and wrote the book from first page to last, in that order, she certainly seems to find her mark by the second half of the book. Her initial, clumsy and often annoying verbal acrobatics become -- by the final chapters -- a graceful ballet. It's a style that isn't always successful even when done well, and the contrast between the early chapters and the latter chapters may go some way in explaining the varied responses given by the reviewers here on Amazon.

The author quite consciously and freely admits in the introduction to having defied the traditional, chronological method of biography. Her chapters are not arranged in order of the major events in Dolly's life; rather, they are organized according to various themes, and in some respects this works. Unfortunately, the themes are not always so different from each other that they justify a separate chapter. As a result, stories and events are often told more than once, gossipy tidbits about the primary (and secondary) personalities are repeated throughout the book -- as if we needed reminding -- and descriptions of Dolly's physical, emotional and mental characteristics and states are given again and again.

All of which gives the feeling that you're riding on a carousel. The scenery starts to look awfully familiar.

I understand that the author's desire to take this unique approach was inspired by Dolly's own 'mode de vie.' Dolly lived in the moment, and each moment was as valid as any other, regardless of when it occurred. I admire the author's willingness to take a risk and tell Dolly's story in a thematic, rather than chronological, fashion. However, this method places additional burdens on the writer to make sure that she is properly guiding the reader along on an unfamiliar ride -- and unfortunately, Shenkar's all-over-the-map, alternately-flying-and-crashing prose makes this trip a difficult one, at least at the beginning.

To sum up, I'd suggest that anyone who is interested in the story of Dolly Wilde should read this book. It IS a fascinating story, and a window onto a world of women artists that we have rarely been offered. Try to get past the repetition and fireworks until you're at least into the second half of the book, when the author really hits her stride.

On the other hand, if the topic alone is of only moderate interest to you, you are likely to find yourself quickly bogged down and disappointed. Summer reading this is not!

Rating:
Summary: For The Intelligent Reader
Review: There is nothing like pleasure to motivate a book review and I took an enormous pleasure in reading -- and then in instantly re-reading - TRULY WILDE. This book gives such a precise and poetic view of the seductive and fascinating Dolly Wilde and such a generously ducumented look at the period in which she flourished -- a period in which conversation was still an art and identity was something that could still be invented - that you really feel yourself feeling with and for Dolly. It's an exemplary, inventive biography. And the photographs are wonderful.

Truly Wilde assumes that its readers delight in language and ideas and bring to it a certain intelligence. I presume that this refreshing approach accounts for the stellar reviews on the book jacket by such brilliant writers as Jeannette Winterson and Edmund White; I presume that it also accounts for the few, suspiciously vitriolic comments found on this site - which seem to be motivated by something other than a desire to share an opinion.

I HIGHLY recommend TRULY WILDE to all lovers of pleasure who like to think: this book, this life will reward you a thousand times over.

Rating:
Summary: A wildly brilliant biography
Review: With "Truly Wilde," author Joan Schenkar has reinterpreted and redefined the possibilities of the biographical form. Her strategy in recreating the world of Parisian intellectual and artistic salons in which Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly flourished in the 1920s - most notably Natalie Barney's Academie des Femmes - is stunningly iconoclastic, deeply compelling, and brilliantly written. From a base of scrupulous and capacious research, from interviews with primary sources and access to original documents, illustrated with a fascinating array of photographs, Schenkar uses a thematic rather than chronological approach to bring Dolly Wilde and her world to life, and to follow with fierce attention the course of her descent to a lonely death in London at the age of 45. Ms. Schenkar does not feel bound by academic niceties. Her book is rich in the odd detail - a palm reading, for instance, or a favorite recipe - that make that era and those brilliant characters as luminous as real life. In her hands, Dolly Wilde becomes a memorable and ultimately mysterious force of nature.