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Avg. Rating: 4.15
Somewhere Over the Rainbow. . . .
I had alreay read Maguire's CONFESSIONS OF AN UGLY STEPSISTER when I read WICKED (very contrary to my otherwise anal, everything-must-go-in-order personality), and I was greatly looking forward to it. Maguire again takes a relatively familiar storyline and turns it on its ear--and the readers along with it! We oftentimes think we know who and what is evil and sometimes even why. Maguire tampers with the "why" moreso than the who/what, really challenging the idea of the stereotypes and preconceived notions we all have. The "Wicked Witch of the West" from THE WIZARD OF OZ seems hardly the same girl, Elphaba, that we encounter in Maguire's book. In fact, she is the same, but our preconceived notions have clouded Maguire's "reality." I found the whole geographic aspects fascinating. How can she be the WW of the West, when she is really from the East? How can Glinda be the Good Witch of the North, when she is really from the East, too? Why does the Witch want those foolish shoes anyway? Why has Glinda given them to Dorothy? Where is Dorothy? Maguire doesn't even bring her into the story until it is very nearly over. Dorothy is more of an afterthought than the pivotal role she plays in the movie, and Maguire doesn't paint her kindly. . . . Maguire has invented a whole new world with his Oz, complete with detailed map, political strife and corruption, family histories, and fantastic elements. I can't wait to see THE WIZARD OF OZ now and watch it from Maguire's alternative perspective. It must be even better than Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON experiment! The only times he lost me at all were when he stayed in that fantasy realm too long. I struggled momentarily with the lack of human beings and "reality" (whatever that is), unlike UGLY STEPSISTER, which has real people and real places throughout. That is hardly his fault, but that's why I gave UGLY STEPSISTER five stars and WICKED only four. Maguire is Tolkein meets C. S. Lewis meets L'Engle meets Jakob Grimm meets Ray Bradbury. . . . I don't know if he can continue this torrid pace of writing specatacularly creative, inventive, challenging, unique, and heady books, but I can't wait to find out!! (New one's out!!)
Wicked: The Nature of Evil
Gregory Maguire, in his novel, WICKED, takes the character we all ready know and had learned to fear and hate - The Wicked Witch of the West - and attempts to tell the reader the whole story of this so-called witch. This novel is a great fantasy for the mature reader -- this book is for adults or young adults, it is in no way written in the same way the original books of Oz were; and that being for young children. Gregory Maguire takes us from her birth to her unfortunate death. The reader gets to know the Witch and discover the true story of Oz. That being of hardships, and the tyranic rule of an evil, moral-less Wizard. Gregory gives a name to this witch, Elphaba, and the reader learns to love her. It's a superb novel, with extrodinary use and control of language, and with vivid imagery. The book discusses the nature of evil, the existance of the soul, and the effects of popular opinion in this extravagant and in-depth story. It should come highly recomended to anyone who loves fan
Wickedly frustrating
Like some of the other reviewers I thought this was one heck of a premise and I was very anxious to read the book, especially in light of the musical running on Broadway. What a disappointment. Usually books of this nature tend to start slow and end up closing with a fury. This one is just the opposite. After a very interesting first half, the second half just goes absolutely nowhere. It's boring and repetitive.Gregory Maguire seems to be going for something between science-fiction and fantasy and he succeeds a little. He's painstakingly re-created a land of Oz from the Baum books that rivals that of Tolkien's Middle Earth and is filled with tremendous detail, but all he ends up with a haphazard narrative that doesn't really do anything to engage the reader, let alone expand so profoundly on the nature of evil, as the book tends to promise. It is intriguing to more or less switch the roles of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard so that she is the "good guy" and he is the "bad guy", but there are literally dozens of hints, dropped none too subtly I might add, that seem like they are building up to a grand revelation or significant plot point and it ends up being nothing. Maguire seems caught in that trap where alluding to something often enough means the reader automatically gets it, through osmosis I guess. I thought this was particularly annoying, especially because he managed to re-capture my interest with one particular plot point involving the Wizard (I won't give it away) and then just let it go. It was never resolved. The book is filled with passages like that. Great amounts of time and space are given to things which, from these allocations, must mean they are important but then they practically become afterthoughts or footnotes. The entire middle section of the book (in my copy from page 200 to about page 300) is more or less a tangent that did absolutely nothing for me. I persevered because, knowing the original story so well as so many of us do, I was interested to see how Maguire would tie in the action from when Dorothy lands in Oz. Some of the ways in which Maguire made the connections were interesting, but not enough to satisfy me. Unfortunately, Wicked falls into the category of a great idea gone badly wrong.
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