Erin's Book #17: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I've been wanting to read Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West since seeing the musical last year. I was shocked by how completely different the book is. Perhaps I've forgotten a lot of the musical, but the book was not anything like how I remembered it.

Wicked follows Elphaba from a little green baby with razor-sharp teeth (her first word was "Horrors") to a college student, rooming with Galinda (the good witch), to her life as an activist, then a nun, and eventually becoming the Wicked Witch of the West, though this role was pretty much in name only (that and a flying broomstick).

The book is very dark and very political. Maguire focuses on all the different lands, Munchkinland, Emerald City, the Vinkus, and others that make up the area. The book is not nearly as whimsical as it might seem on the surface. Sure, there are talking Animals with souls, but they're murdered and oppressed. The Wizard is a villain, Dorothy (who makes only a small appearance) an accidental thief.

I found this book fascinating. It's pretty thick and took me about a month to get to, but I really enjoyed diving into the world Maguire creates. I'm not super familiar with the Wizard of Oz - I've actually only seen it once (it terrified me too much as a child), so I'm not sure how much this story meshes with that one. But regardless, it's an intriguing read. We're always kept at some distance from Elphaba. I found her endearing and sympathetic, even if I didn't always totally understand her. As you might expect, she's a rather tragic character, generally well-intentioned but rarely, if ever, getting the desired results and eternally haunted by guilt up until her untimely end. Wicked does not have the fairy-tale PG ending of the musical.

Maguire tackles a lot in this book - faith and religion, class, guilt and the quest for redemption, friendship and betrayal, family, politics and murder. I was expecting a much lighter tale, but what I got instead with rich and fulfilling. I picked up Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister this weekend and look forward to reading about the other side of Cinderella's story.