The Wildes

By Louis Bayard,

Book cover of The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts

Book description

From the bestselling author of The Pale Blue Eye, Louis Bayard, comes Atonement meets The Paris Wife, a brilliantly original, profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and…


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Why read it?

1 author picked The Wildes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We all know how the story of Oscar Wilde ends, but Louis Bayard has brought us into the family, telling the story from the perspective of Oscar's wife, Constance, and, to a lesser degree, their two sons. The language is gorgeous. It evokes both the period and the witty and weighted conversation we would expect of the Wilde circle. Heartbreaking but also somewhat edifying, this novel gives voice to Constance, the woman who bore so much tragedy with grace and intelligence.

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