Half- Way Book Reviews

I say half way because I haven't finished reading them yet. I have two books that I am reading at the moment. One is The Picture of Dorian Gray which I've mentioned before and the other is my bathroom book. Which I'm sure you'll all agree is a definite must have. Of course my book isn't called The Bathroom Book, I'd be a little bit worried of the contents if it was. My bathroom book is called The Piano Teacher.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

It's going well. I must admit even in the book it doesn't really give a detailed explantion of how Dorian's picture has now become his soul besides an off the cut remark right after he saw the painting, but I am going to hold full judgement until I've read the whole book, but it does kind of explain why the film Dorian Gray gives a very vague answer to the question of how his soul came to be in the painting, well in the words of Oscar Wilde, it just did.


The characters are still as enchanting although further into the book you don't see Lord Harry giving Dorian some of his great wisdom and even Basil, the painter, takes to the sidelines. But, I suppose if the book had been about them then it wouldn't be called The Picture of Dorian Gray. Overall, so far the book is still fantastic. I do keep forgetting to read it on the bus to work but they aren't very long bus journeys and you need a good chapter's worth of time to really get stuck into it; maybe even two chapters worth.

The Piano Teacher

At the moment I'm a third of the way through the book and I'm slightly struggling as to see why it's called The Piano Teacher. I'm not a professional critic or anything but usually the title on the front kind of gives you an insight into the contents in the middle. I can't even remember the piano teacher's name she hasn't been mentioned in it that much! This book is set in WWII, as all the best books are, in Hong Kong. At the moment it's flitting between two time periods 1941 and 1952, the main character in both of these periods is Will Truesdale. The 1941 tale is from Will Truesdale's point of view and the 1952 period is from the piano teachers point of view but has Will in it.

The whole context and plot of the book actually reminds me of The Painted Veil; a film with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in it. The time periods all fit too. And, the piano teachers husband in the book is involved with the government helping to sanitise the water systems in Hong Kong because of cholera; and the woman's husband in the film is actually a biological doctor of infectious diseases and works with the government to improve the water systems in the small towns and villages to stop the spreading of cholera.

Interesting, I'd say. I can never read one book at once, that'd be terribly boring.