The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The reason I chose this book in the first place was because I had been meaning to read Wilde's only novel ever since I read The Importance of Being Earnest freshman year and loved it. I was not disappointed by the novel in any way. It was masterfully written, the characters were splendid in a devilish sense and the protagonist the most captivating of them all. The protagonist's name is Dorian Gray, and the whole novel centers around a portrait done of Dorian, which ages instead of him. The portrait is what Dorian considers to be a visual expression of his soul, and as the story goes on and he ages the portrait becomes hideous, wrinkled and aged, with the bearings of his many "sins" engraved in the portrait.
The biggest theme in this story and also what made it so enjoyable were the philosophical musings of Wilde through the dialogue of the characters. Wilde used the character Lord Henry Wotton to express his ideas that "All art is quite useless." (Wilde 2) and the thought that beauty is the most important thing beyond anything else. "'Beauty is a form of Genius-is higher, indeed than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned.'" (Wilde 24) Dorian's life is fuled by this thought, as all he cares about is the finer things in life, and how pleased he is by his youthfulness even when he goes into his late 30s. The relationship between all of the main male characters especially between Dorian and Basil Hallward, the man who painted the portrait, and Dorian and Lord Wotton subtly expresses the sexuality of Wilde. There is no explicit expression of homosexuality in the book, but at the time the book was written, it would have pushed the scandal of this book to a catacalystic point for Wilde.
I can see why this story would have been such a controversial one in the time when  it was written in 1891. The main characters are all kind of terrible people. Dorian commits murder, blackmail, and cares nothing for things beyond physical beauty. Anyone reading this would expect it to be a moral tale, and I won't say what happened in the end for fear of ruining the story, but I don't think he was punished in a proper way enough for the audience reading about his "sins".
I would recommend this book to anyone, as it was a great and fun read. It was a great way for Wilde to express his ideals without laying them out in boring terms. It's a shame he died because of his sexuality when he had so much more to offer the literary world.