A review by brooke_review
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
4.0
Beginning Impressions:
So I'm only 9 pages into Wicked & I can already tell you where Maguire has gone wrong - taking the characters of OZ & trying to paint them with worldly, adult tones. The appeal of OZ is that the characters are wise in their naïveté - they "know" so much more than they "don't know." A child can read one of Baum's books & get from it a completely different message than an adult. The original OZ stories transcend boundaries of all kinds. And here, within the first couple of pages, Maguire has the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, & Cowardly Lion suggesting that the Wicked Witch is a castrated hermaphrodite who prefers the company of women! I am all for a dirty, gritty story, but not with OZ - there is a finesse here that needs to be preserved if one is going to attempt to even touch this series. Having these fairy land characters talk like lowly, earth men misses the whole point ... and magic of OZ.
Let's continue on ... hmmmm.
Few Pages On Update:
Now there was just mention of a magical clock which shows a man with sexual parts in both the front and the back. A woman and her daughter proceed to have sex with the man simultaneously. How this is OZ, I don't know - is this OZ before it was OZ?! Maguire is going to need to do an excellent job of convincing me that all of this is necessary and relevant.
About 1/3 of the Way Through:
I am liking the novel much better now. Once the green child was born, things got interesting. I am loving that we are getting a glimpse of Elphaba's life at college, & the fact that she and Glinda the Good were college roommates. Additionally, this talk of "Animal" vs. "animal" politics is rather interesting. I am a bit dismayed that we are missing some years though -'the birth of Elphaba's sister and the Wizard of OZ overtaking the Emerald City. If you aren't familiar with the original canon, you may not know what's going on at this point in terms of "political rulers."
Around the Halfway Point:
Well imagine that! Who would have thought that Elphaba would be working for the greater good of the people and Animals and animals of OZ? This makes me wonder, what exactly made the "witch" go "wicked?" And maybe she's not so "wicked" after all ...
The End:
Who would have guessed it? I ended up really liking the novel. If it weren't for the unnecessary sexual references (and I'm no prude - they just have no place in OZ) and the fact that OZ was not acknowledged as a fairy country (Elphaba's astonishment over the Scarecrow, for example, when in the original series there are far stranger creatures roaming OZ than a Scarecrow), I would be tempted to give Wicked 5 stars. As it is, it gets 4. I love that we have been wrong about the "Wicked Witch" all this time. I love that she was actually part of a movement within OZ, and that she was just trying to better things for the country. What an interesting take to make her have been misunderstood.
So I'm only 9 pages into Wicked & I can already tell you where Maguire has gone wrong - taking the characters of OZ & trying to paint them with worldly, adult tones. The appeal of OZ is that the characters are wise in their naïveté - they "know" so much more than they "don't know." A child can read one of Baum's books & get from it a completely different message than an adult. The original OZ stories transcend boundaries of all kinds. And here, within the first couple of pages, Maguire has the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, & Cowardly Lion suggesting that the Wicked Witch is a castrated hermaphrodite who prefers the company of women! I am all for a dirty, gritty story, but not with OZ - there is a finesse here that needs to be preserved if one is going to attempt to even touch this series. Having these fairy land characters talk like lowly, earth men misses the whole point ... and magic of OZ.
Let's continue on ... hmmmm.
Few Pages On Update:
Now there was just mention of a magical clock which shows a man with sexual parts in both the front and the back. A woman and her daughter proceed to have sex with the man simultaneously. How this is OZ, I don't know - is this OZ before it was OZ?! Maguire is going to need to do an excellent job of convincing me that all of this is necessary and relevant.
About 1/3 of the Way Through:
I am liking the novel much better now. Once the green child was born, things got interesting. I am loving that we are getting a glimpse of Elphaba's life at college, & the fact that she and Glinda the Good were college roommates. Additionally, this talk of "Animal" vs. "animal" politics is rather interesting. I am a bit dismayed that we are missing some years though -'the birth of Elphaba's sister and the Wizard of OZ overtaking the Emerald City. If you aren't familiar with the original canon, you may not know what's going on at this point in terms of "political rulers."
Around the Halfway Point:
Well imagine that! Who would have thought that Elphaba would be working for the greater good of the people and Animals and animals of OZ? This makes me wonder, what exactly made the "witch" go "wicked?" And maybe she's not so "wicked" after all ...
The End:
Who would have guessed it? I ended up really liking the novel. If it weren't for the unnecessary sexual references (and I'm no prude - they just have no place in OZ) and the fact that OZ was not acknowledged as a fairy country (Elphaba's astonishment over the Scarecrow, for example, when in the original series there are far stranger creatures roaming OZ than a Scarecrow), I would be tempted to give Wicked 5 stars. As it is, it gets 4. I love that we have been wrong about the "Wicked Witch" all this time. I love that she was actually part of a movement within OZ, and that she was just trying to better things for the country. What an interesting take to make her have been misunderstood.