Dorian

Rating:
Summary: Dorian Gray 2-The Sequel
Review: Jeremy Reed is the kind of writer you take your time with. Although his writing is fluid and full of vivid pictures he is not rushed, and when you read this fascinating hypothetical sequel to Dorian Gray you shouldn't rush it either. As you may remember, at the end of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Dorian slashes his painting and dies, all of his sins now clearly etched into his face and body. Dorian, the sequel starts in Paris, several years later. Henry Wotton is now Dorian's lover, and Dorian is still young, beautiful and more depraved than ever. With a voracious appetite for beautiful boys, alcohol, drugs and oppulant clothing, he practices black magic and goes to s&m clubs. In Paris, he meets Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and finally Oscar Wilde a shadow of his former self since his release from jail. I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. It is totally original and full of intrigue. Jeremy Reed is an intellect first. I think this is why he succeeds so beautifully.

Rating:
Summary: a work of unforgettable intensity and absolute decadence
Review: jeremy reed's "dorian" had me riveted from the first page to the last, and i read it all in one sitting. reed is the modern jk huysmans, and like that sickly but brilliant french author reed delights in mental escape from the banality of monotonous day to day routine and the mediocrity of daily existence. anyone who has decadent or anti social tendencies will immediately recognize reed as a fellow dreamer and inhabitant of perverse illusion. as in "chasing black rainbows" and "isidore", one experiences the unique and wonderful sensation of being propelled into a magical realm of imaginative reality and poetic madness. the author clearly relates to the outcasts of society and those who freely violate its repressive taboos and live on it's fringes, as the gangster/tranvestite character of Nadja (no doubt a veiled homage to Andre Breton's brilliant novel of the same name)does. "I've always been fascinated with the mad, the criminals, the outlaws of society" she says, and we can be sure that this is reed speaking, just as des esseintes was a mouthpiece for huysmans. this is a must read for anyone interested in surrealism, symbolism, decadence, and just plain weirdness. kudos to reed for another masterpiece of fantastic sympathy and 'convulsive beauty'.