Wicked

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
By Gregory Maguire

This screaming-green book was gifted to me by Elmer and I've been reading it for a couple of weeks now. What's interesting about Wicked is that it tells the story from the other side of the coin. Wicked is the sort-of bio of The Wicked Witch of the West, the infamous villain that Dorothy vanquished in Wizard of Oz, through "liquidation".

Maguire's yarn gives the witch a name and a human life to go along with. She is born Elphaba. Her green skin sets her apart from the rest of the world. Her birth is seen as a punishment to her minister father and promiscuous mother. Her schooling feeds her rebellious sympathies and her bitter lovelife seals her fate to be the Wicked Witch of the West.

Her final encounter with the naive Dorothy is retold in a tragicomic thread. Elphaba's hardened life has led her to become suspicious of anything. She rebuffs even Dorothy's innocent visit and this leads to the witch's undoing.

All in all, it was interesting to read how Maguire "unravelled" the rather tight weave of L. Frank Baum's original Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I loved Baum's tongue-in-cheek approach and I felt Gregory Maguire's storytelling failed to measure up to the original.

Maguire may have been trying to create a contrast to Baum's style. In his attempt to tell the B-side story, Maguire tried to mix realist narrative into the fantastic realm. The problem here is that a Fantasy like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz works because of the details it leaves out. I felt that Maguire's mixture only blended well in a few parts, but failed to coalesce effectively in most.