books:

	Wicked Musical Tie-in Edition : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Gregory Maguire Harper Paperbacks, 2004 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 1522 reviews view larger image
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Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin -- no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or to overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. But Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters the university in Shiz, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz' most promising young citizens.

Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals -- those creatures with voices, souls and minds -- are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals -- even it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Even wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.

In Wicked, Gregory Maguire has taken the largely unknown world of Oz and populated it with the power of his own imagination. Fast-paced, fantastically real and supremely entertaining, this is a novel of vision and re-vision. Oz never will be the same again.

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Truly Bizarre But Impossible to Put Down

I suppose that if I was going to take a famous children's story and make an adult novel out of it, I'm not sure I would have chosen something based on the Wizard of Oz. Maybe "Blueberries for Sally," where it turns out that the missing father from the story had been killed in a gangland slaying years before, and the Mom and Sally were now hiding in the Maine countryside as part of the witness protection program. And Sally was actually the daughter of Al Capone, and so on...

The Wizard of Oz as adult fiction?

Strangely enough, it works. Without changing any of the existing rules, characters, or storylines from the children's stories, Gregory Maguire weaves a story told from the point of view of Elphaba, the much maligned and misnamed Wicked Witch, making her a sympathetic and ultimately pathetic character. In the end, knowing that one day she will encounter a lost girl from Kansas with a bucket of water named Dorothy, we begin to hope against hope that maybe somehow, in this version, she will escape her fate. But just like in the movie Titanic, where we know, no matter what, that the ship is going down, there is no stopping the inevitable. But like Titanic, what makes this story interesting is how Maguire gets us there.

We even end up feeling sorry for the flying monkeys.

I will not take the time to review the sequel: "Son of a Witch," separately. It was okay - maybe a weak three stars - but nowhere near as good as Wicked. Perhaps Maguire should have quit while he was still ahead, although I understand he is coming out with a third book, focusing on the Cowardly Lion, if it is not already published. Perhaps he may recapture the magic of Wicked in that effort.

To summarize, Wicked is worth reading, first because it is a heck of a good story in its own right, and second because to my knowledge nothing like this has ever been done.

Maybe we can look forward to George W Bush writing an adult version of "My Pet Goat" in his retirement. Or maybe Lynne Cheney can knock that out for us now that her husband is ostensibly retiring as well, since she has already dabbled in adult fiction. And if you're wondering what I mean by that, and are in need of a good laugh, go read the reviews for Lynne Cheney's first novel, "Sisters," published 20+ years ago, elsewhere on this Amazon site:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0451112040/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

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What is the hype??

OK, I broke down and bought the book after all the hype. I cannot figure out what was so great about the story.

The idea is the Elphaba is the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. But, the catch is she is not really that bad. Yes, she is green, has a temper, and a fear of water. But she is really not that wicked. The story starts out with her mother being a higher up that left the city to marry a preacher and live in the country, which she hates all of it. She does lover her husband but is sleeping with everyone that comes around. She believes that she gives birth to a monster and calls in her nanny to take care of her.

The next part is about Elphaba at school. She does not fit in and has strong opinions about the great wizard of oz taking away the rights of Animals, animals that talk and such. You also meet her sister, Nessarose, who is a religion nut. With a turn of events, she leaves school and hides out at the Emerald City and doing basic terrorist activities.

From there she has an affair with an old school mate. Guilty she leaves the Emerald City to find the unfortunate wife to beg for forgiveness for the affair.

I have to say that it is a good story if it would have been shortened to 300 pages. There was so much detail about everything that I had a hard time sticking with the story. I also got a little confused on the quick change of moods of Elphaba. I could not understand what was the point of sending the flying monkeys after Dorothy, inviting her to dinner, then threatening her with a little broom. She was not a mood swing girl, she was psychotic.

I have yet to figure out if it was work keeping or selling or even worth reading the next books in the series.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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