THE WEIGHT OF ANGELS, exploring the alt-hist "what if Wilde hadn't played the fool for Queensberry?"

THE WEIGHT OF ANGELS
JOHN BOYNE
Henry Holt & Co (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed?

When the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite." The most celebrated playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution, and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiraled into public disgrace, humiliation, and an early death.

But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne's extraordinary new novel, The Weight of Angels. Rather than dying in penury in Paris at age forty-six, what if Wilde had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes of the first part of the twentieth century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life were as dramatic, tumultuous, and exhilarating as the first?

In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the iconic Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am not a big fan of Author Boyne. I came within an ace of deleting this widget. Because I've learned to be super-scrupulous in reading the whole text of something my urge is to ignore/delete *before* I do it, I saw the open-sesame of the offer: "what if Wilde hadn't played the fool for Queensberry?"

Sold.

You would have to go some to get me not to finish this story. The entire course of Anglophone culture would've changed without this famous sodomite...what an ugly word...being a complete idiot and suing a nasty little waster for saying a true thing in a vicious, pointed way. Wilde was fucking the man's son, a little anger and hatefulness was to be expected in that time and place. Of course it went very badly indeed for Bosie, but broken eggs∈omelette....

Author Boyne has this version of Oscar continue to be abrasive and obnoxious to the world at large (because genius y'know), continuing to flaunt...and I use this word in its strictest sense...his sexuality while continuing to produce literary genius for the enthralled masses. I know this is a hard swallow fo y'all "the way it is is the way it is and so it must only be this way" folks when the subject is history. The alternate history genre comes from the nineteenth-century thought experiment, a technique of gaming out what might happen in a multifactor scenario. War colleges in particular, giant corporations, political operatives, all use thought experiments...counterfactuals colloquially...to help with decision making. Applying the technique to fiction delights me.

Of course the hurdle he faced in bringing this scenario to life is writing a genius's words that were never spoken. I'm feeling charitable: the effort he put into the research, the absorption into Wilde and his world was so extensive, that I was able to suspend disbelief.

“Are you deliberately trying to be rude?”
“No, it comes quite naturally to me.”

It's the sort of line you or I would be proud as hell to skate off. It would not end up in The Big Book of Oscar Wilde Quotes.

Much as I absolutely loved "Oscar's Law" and, in honesty, felt it was a very reasonable conjecture on Author Boyne's part, it contributed to my growing sense of unease about the "Mary Sue"-ness of the Wilde in this story. Some of his Forrest-Gumpian meet-everybody-impress'em-all quality is just projecting his actual past into an unlived future. It does not take away one bit my unease at the way it reads.

Another qualm the Mary-Sueness of it all did not help the story is the sheer number of people who float through the six-hundredish pages. If one is not versed in the dramatis personae of the early twntieth century, this story will bore you rigid with "who was that? why should I care?" feelings that result from putting too much of one's research on the page. It clutters up the reading experience, though I'll say it delighted me personally. His take on Lady Thelma Furness versus Wallace Simpson...*chef's kiss*

It was a successful read, an enjoyable trip...for me. I suspect others won't entirely agree. The last words properly belong to Oscar Wilde hinself, summing up this imagines life succinctly and well:

“I wanted to be a writer. And I became a writer. That is how I spent my life. Sometimes loved; sometimes scolded. Sometimes celebrated. Sometimes loathed. Sometimes a force for change; sometimes my own worst enemy. But I was always read.”

As is meet and right.