Wicked, Gregory Maguire

The Wizard of Oz was a huge hit when it was released, but Maguire had a different view to the well known story. Wicked expresses his views of what a politically disturbed, and dangerously unstable Oz might have been like at the time of Dorothy’s visit.

Wicked takes a deeper look into the characters, and mainly, follows Elphaba’s (the Wicked Witch of the West) life. The Wizard of Oz gives an extremely bad image to the Witch. Wicked completely topples that idea around, looking at it from the Witch’s side: what if the Wizard was in fact the bad guy, and what If Dorothy was just a bother, or a cause for gossip, not in fact the hero she is presented as in the Wizard of Oz.

I loved Wicked, simply because it was so realistic. I have never read a book where a fantasy world is so well described as here. The book takes time in describing seemingly insignificant details, and they seem to be there more so you can build yourself an image of Oz than for the benefit of the story. But however realistic Oz may seem, Maguire still leaves Oz the magic and mystery Lyman Frank Baum originally put in the story.

But a book being so complete causes problems in the ease of reading: I found it difficult to understand some of the writing, mainly because of my limited vocabulary knowledge. This may have slightly deterred my interest from the book: it was a book you would be reluctant to read, yet equally reluctant to leave. Also (though for some, this may not be a disadvantage) there is a lot of speaking, which seems to polite for what it is: people don’t interrupt each other despite their next point being mentioned at the beginning of someone’s say and some people don’t talk through a whole discussion, whilst more important characters talk throughout the whole of it. One last, more minor point is having to rectify the difference between an animal and an Animal.

Overall, this was a very good book, and the good points win over the bad. Gregory Maguire discusses Evil, and it is interesting to see how he gives different characters different ideas, despite only being one author. One last point: after watching the musical, the book seems long and you are waiting for the major events depicted in the play. If you do have the opportunity to watch the musical, I think you should read the book first; you’ll have a deeper insight on the characters and a more complete story: the musical will be like a fun summary of the story. 8/10