Oscar Wilde is best known as an author and playwright; those who know anything more about his life usually know that he was imprisoned for “homosexuality.” But he was also married to a woman, Constance, with whom he had two children. In this witty and imaginative novel, Louis Bayard explores Wilde’s family life and the impact of his affair on his wife and sons.
The book opens in the fall of 1892, when Wilde and his family went on holiday to the Norfolk countryside. Their houseguests include aspiring poet Lord Alfred Douglas, soon the object of Wilde’s affections. But while it was 19th-century attitudes towards homosexuality that got Wilde in trouble, Bayard focuses more broadly at what happens when a family falls apart, as affection is lost, trust betrayed, and human flaws magnified. The middle three “acts” of the book follow Constance and each of the sons in the aftermath of Wilde’s imprisonment and the family’s financial ruin, while they try to make sense of their own lives and selves. In the final act, Bayard reimagines an ending for the family that feels both redemptive and bittersweet.
Bayard has given us nuanced characters, banter that evokes Wilde himself, and a storyline that brilliantly blends a deep knowledge of the Wildes’s lives with just the right touch of imagination.
