Son of Oscar Wilde

This is a very interesting book. It's the story of what happened to the Wilde family from a different perspective - which is to say, the perspective of a small child who was basically shielded from knowing any details about what was going on with his father.

For no reason he could fathom, Vyvyan

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Wilde and his brother are packed off to Switzerland one day with scant belongings, beginning a period of exile in Europe that lasted for several years. His name is changed, he's told basically to forget his father ever existed and never tell anyone about him. He never saw his father again, and his mother, too, only lived for a few years after that.

From that perspective, it's a quite sad book, but it's quite interesting too because it is a glimpse into the mindset of the period - and also a *literal* glimpse *at* the period, because Wilde actually does spend a lot of time describing the way places he stayed looked, clothes he wore, etc.

(An interesting tidbit for my Catholic friends: Oscar Wilde blamed his "moral obliquity" on the fact that his parents wouldn't let him convert to Catholicism! He finally did convert shortly before his death. His son, Vyvyan, the author of this book I'm reading, wound up converting on his own while still a child because the religion just intensely attracted him. So, there you have it!)

This book is a good read as both a historical document and an autobiography. If you're interested looking at the story of Oscar from a perspective that was simultaneously extremely close to it and very far away - I recommend this book.

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