Conversations with Wilde by Merlin Holland is fiction. Yes the author made up the interview questions as well as the answers. And it does feel Wildean. The author has used Wilde's works and comments to make up the answers so it does have verisimilitude. It is a lot of fun and you don't doubt its accuracy. If you like Oscar Wilde you will certainly like these clever conversations. For you it would be a "must read".

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this book, in exchange for my honest opinion. This book will be available to purchase on June 11th.

I was interested in this book for two reasons: First, I loved The Picture of Dorian Gray. Second, the idea of a fictional conversation with Wilde is fantastically original. The closest to that setup I’ve read is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, which I really enjoyed, and of course there’s no biographical angle with that.

This book was so much fun! Oscar Wilde was larger than life in many ways, which Holland conveyed with ease. During the course of this book, I realized that I knew far less about his life than I thought. Despite his levity, Oscar Wilde’s life was tragic in many ways.

What set this apart from many other biographies is the sense of fun the entire book had about itself. It really did feel like an interview over cigarettes. I would gladly read more books written in this style by this author.

At less than 200 pages, this books can easily be read in an afternoon, but the facts thrown in, combined with the engaging conversational feel will keep you thinking about it long after you finish the last word. I definitely recommend this fun fact-based fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley for this book.

This was an extremely quick and easy read, but I feel like it missed the mark. At no point did I "hear" Oscar Wilde while I was reading, and I'm a huge fan of his. It didn't feel intimate, it didn't feel like I was sitting with Wilde and feeling him come through, it just felt like a pretty dry and dull question and answer series on NBC. It read more like a biography than being engaged in a personal conversation with Wilde. While it was interesting to gain this additional knowledge on the author, I genuinely didn't enjoy the book.

I'm unable to give it a 2.5/5 so I'm rounding up, but it's not something I would recommend to even my Oscar Wilde fanatic friends.