Gregory Maguire is best known as an author who writes books that follow characters from well known fairy tales and stories. He puts a spin on what we know already of a story. For example he has written about Snow White in a book called 'Mirror Mirror', he has also written a book called 'Confession of an Ugly Step-Sister' based on the story of Cinderella, from the perspective of an ugly step-sister. I was never interested in these, until I came across one based on one of my all time favourite stories, 'The Wizard of Oz'.

I was very intrigued by this book from the outset...in the smallest of nutshell's - it is exactly what it says on the book: 'The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of West'. We are taken back in time, way before Dorothy 'dropped' into the land Oz. We learn how the wicked witch - affectional named Elphaba (after the initials of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' author L (('L' sound)) Frank (('F' phonetical sound)) Baum (('B' phonetical sound)) ) grew up, we follow her turbulent 'bullied' times at school and watch her grow into a strong minded, nature obsessed, passionate, politically righteous, driven lady.

Elphaba is not depicted as the evil green witch from a far off lair, who likes to cackle here and there, flying around on her broomstick (we very cleverly find out how she learns to fly later in the book) as one might expect. She is depicted as the emerald girl, who was born of 'normal' parents (very interesting discoveries as to why she is green emerge), but because she is green, she is left feeling rejected by her embarrased and ashamed family. She is just...different.

One thing I absolutely love about this book is it's ability to challenge our preconceived ideas of what good and evil is. We are lead to believe from the original story of Oz, that Elphaba IS wicked - but that's only because the majority of people say so - how do we know she is not misunderstood? How do we know that she has not been...framed...and is in actual fact doing good and the 'good' people are perhaps the bad, manipulative, propganda spurned ones???

We discover that when Elphaba starts university, she is made roommates with none other than Galinda from the upper uplands (the north). We learn how her name changes to Glinda, and how she becomes 'Glinda the Good, from the North'. We learn how they find mild friendship from initial loathing. Along the way we meet a host of other characters that we have never met in Oz before: Elphaba's mother and father (a whoooooole other story there, as we discover that Elphaba's birth leads to many questions being asked and the destruction of her core family - which is understandable, she was born green for goodness sake - who wouldn't question this - especially as her parents have 'human coloured' skin!) We also meet the Head teacher at their University (who has 'connections' with the Wizard), Boq (a Galinda obsessed, munchkin), Dr Dillamond (an Elphaba inspiring teacher, who is also a goat) and Fiyero (the 'unusual' foreign boy with diamond tattoes on his skin).

The attention to detail and plot is rich. However, Maguire's detail is sometimes so scrupulous I found myself wondering if it was really necessary to know each and every detail about each and every thing in Oz. I found 'Wicked' quite difficult to read at times, as it felt like Maguire was taking forever to make a point, which could be, essentially quite straight-forward to explain. We also get side-tracked into the 'goings on' of Oz, which deviate from the main storyline, which I find confuses matters.

'Wicked' has been turned into a stage musical (which is superb, by the way) - but the storyline is VERY different. The book (which came before the musical, so it's the original version, by the way) can be incredibally dark, heavily political and down right obscene (well, I couldn't think another word to best desribe the casual use of words such as 'c**k', 's**t', f**k etc) - which I was absolutely not expecting.

I found myself falling in love (well, almost) with Elphaba and despising everyone around her. We eventually meet Dorothy (a la original) but we learn about what other things happen in and around the story that we already know. There were moments where I was gripped to the book, as Dorothy kept making matters worse for herself and upsetting Elphaba without even realising (ok, this is really hard trying to give anything away).

One thing I didn't like about this book is the way that it's chapters are divided. The book is actually divided into 'chunks' that depict stages of Elphaba's life. Within these chunks there is no consistency of size or number of chapters. This want for consistency in chapter size is a personal thing, but it made me feel unsettled reading - as I felt the need to check how many pages were in each chapter to work out if I had enough time to read a whole one - or go to sleep (I don't know about you, but I can't stop reading a book if I haven't finished a chapter.) For those of you that are interested, this might be the opportunity to mention that the UK edition is published by Headline and is approximately 402 pages (but at times, felt about 4402!) and cost is the usual hardback/paperback price (I noticed it's currently in many popular bookshop's '3 for 2' promotions).

If you enjoy books that really delve into a subject and uncover every stone and really gets it's teeth into an idea, then this is for you. If however, you are like me and enjoy a good story at a good pace, which doesn't leave your eyes following the words whilst thinking 'hmm maybe I need to reread a bit, I don't know what's going on' then this one might not be for you. Which I think is shame as the story is very clever and has some amazingly brilliant concepts and ideas about politics, people and the nature of good and evil. It made me question things around me, such as the media, for example, are we only being told one side of every story etc...hmmmmmmmm.

If you can, get the UK edition of the book in Hardbook - it is simply beautiful. It's black cover and shiny green shadowed face of Elphaba and green painted book edge is stunning. If you want a cheaper option, the book is available in paperback which opts for the logo and imagery from the stage show. Obviously a marketing ploy to get more bums on sits in the west-end - which really annoys me as the stories are so, so, so, sooooooo different (they should have transfered the beautiful style of the hardback dammit) - grrr and arrrgh all round.

I'm still not tempted by any of Maguire's other books, but I would reread this again...IF I had PLENTY of times on my hands to give it my full attention and was able to read it for a few hours non-stop.

As the west-end promotion say, 'Something Wicked this way comes'...it is truly a Wicked book.

Thanks for reading :)


© MarcoG 2008
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