It was uneven but interesting, especially in relation to the musical which I definitely have to check out, thanks Lil Gee for letting me borrow

I read Wicked (at home) in conjunction with the Black Dahlia (in transit) which was a nice counterbalance. I finished it in a week though I furiously read the last couple of days

"The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West"

That being said this is an interesting work because it revisits a beloved story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the subsequent movie The Wizard of Oz with a fresh look at the "wicked witch of the west", her back story and the story from her point of view.. very post-modern like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Growing up in France, my encounter with the Oz stories actually came through the anime Oz no Mahōtsukai, not the movie

This is a lot more fantasy than I can handle (not my steelo.. kinda Lord of the Rings like) and that entails discovering a whole new world with all its cultural intricacies (language, race, etc). I am however hyped about the broadway musical so I thought I'd soldier on. It's actually pretty dark in tone and I expect the musical to be more on the fun side. There also some sexually explicit scenes which is surprising since the original is a children's book

Plot from Wikipedia

The novel is a political, social, and ethical commentary on what good and evil really are. The story is about Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl who grows up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West. It tells of her time at Shiz University, as well as her journey to the Emerald City and The Vinkus, among other places in Oz. The book explains Elphaba's motives and examines her true personality. Many familiar characters from Oz are featured in Wicked, including the Wizard, Glinda (here originally called "Galinda" but later adopting the name Glinda), the Wicked Witch of the East (here called Nessarose), and Dorothy. Maguire also introduces several new characters including Fiyero, Madame Morrible, and Doctor Dillamond.

I really like the illustrations by Douglas Smith, there are only six of em (one for each chapter and one for the gorgeous map which comes in handy).. they have a very distinct quality (pseudo scratchboard style) and some of them are very ominous in regards to what's to come

There are some serious dips in interest throughout the book, the prologue is good, then things are kinda ehh for Elphaba's childhood. Things pick back up while she is in school, in particular the friendships and the political aspect with Animals vs the Wizard. Then I got really lost when she's trying to be a spy although her affair with Fiyero shoulda been more captivating. The journey to Vinkus is terrible in pacing. Things accelerate in to catch up to events from the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy and I really like that part. I actually re-read the prologue which has Elphie spy on the band of four and you could really see things come together.. this acceleration of time in the storyline can also be seen in the pagecount, chapters become a lot shorter.. I dunno I kinda felt cheated as a reader but I guess I was happy to get to the end

In general the story of Elphaba is pretty interesting, I suppose it is a sympathetic view of her which is probably not the intent in the Wizard of Oz. Elphaba is actually mistaken for a witch but decides to grow into the character, I'm bugged that they never explain why she abhors water but there's a lot of origin stuff and it makes me wanna check out the original material and the movie

There are a few discrepancies with the original story though they went mostly unnoticed to me heh

Evil is a recurrent theme and there are also a lot of symbolic stuff that comes with the source material. Cool note, Maguire made up the Witch's name Elphaba after the Oz author's initial L-F-B- (L. Frank Baum). The end of a book has a section "Reader's Group Guide" which has some cliff notes style discussion themes that I'm afraid I can't really speak much about, I really should pay more attention to what I read

From Maguire's bibiliography, I found out he like specializes in writing stories on alternate characters of fairy tales (revisionism).. which is dubious or borderline whack (one trick pony!). Maguire wrote a sequel to Wicked called Son of a Witch


406 pages

Quotes
"And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time"
- "And did she ever come out?"
- "Not yet"

Links
- reviews - Wicked

Posted	Friday, March 17, 2006 @ 11:54:33 AM (993 days ago)
Tags	book
Comments	1, last reply by g2k
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nice you make me wanna finish it. lemme know if and when you wanna catch the show... i want a second run =).

g2k on 3/17/2006 3:38:38 PM, 993 days ago

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