A Variation in Major Key - A Review of Creatures of Will and Temper

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don’t quite remember when I first read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I think it might have been somewhere in the first two years of my time at university, when I was reading in wide, near-indiscriminate swathes because there was still so much that I had not yet read and would need to read if I wanted to be ready for the degree I’d chosen to specialise in. Access to a proper university library was certainly helpful in that regard, because I don’t remember seeing Dorian Gray in the library of my rather conservative Catholic high school.

It was also a case of “right place, right time”: I doubt I would have enjoyed Wilde’s writing style while I was in high school, and I rather doubt I would have liked the titular character enough to want to keep on reading. But by the time I was at university I was ready for it, and though I can’t say I enjoyed it (I think I’d need to read it again, now, to see if I actually do), I appreciated it for its merits, and for the influence it and its author exert in various corners of the arts.

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