Book Club Meeting: "The Picture Of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

Greetings Mocha Girls!

Our June 2019 book of the month is "The Picture Of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. Remember, if you don't finish the book, you are still welcome, so come anyway!

Please purchase the book from our host, Sisters Uptown Bookstore (the only black-owned bookstore in Manhattan), where you will receive a 10% discount. You must identify yourself as a member of Mocha Girls Read. Call the store at 212-862-3680 if you need your book shipped.

It is also recommended that you come to the meeting prepared to purchase the following month's book selection from Sisters Uptown Bookstore.

R.S.V.P. Etiquette:

Ladies, please make sure to RSVP to an event or book club meeting ONLY if you are going. Do not RSVP if you are thinking about going or would like to go! ONLY IF YOU ARE GOING!

We know life happens and things might come up, so please update your RSVP as soon as you can. We are making plans based off of the number of RSVPs. Thanks in advance.

Synopsis

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian’s beauty; he believes that Dorian’s beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat’s hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.

About the Author

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for homosexuality, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.