Wicked: A good read

• Paperback: 406 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (September 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060987103
• ISBN-13: 978-0060987107
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If you’re looking to revisit your childhood and lose yourself in the land of Oz where jolly Munchkinlanders dance and sing in rhyme, where good friends embark on a journey of a lifetime and are all the better for it, where good triumphs over evil; then this is not the book you want to read. Wicked: The real life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Greg Maguire’s tome that rewrites the history of the Wizard of Oz and it’s antagonist, the Wicked Witch, is 400 some odd pages of eloquent prose that reaches into our fondest memories of a classic story and brings is kicking and bloody into our adult frames of reference. It’s like the first time you realize that Mommy is actually Santa. The word doesn’t seem so magical and optimistic anymore.

We find that the Wicked Witch isn’t really a witch at all. Sometimes the disguises we create to shield ourselves from the outside come to haunt us later on.

What I thought would be a sympathetic retelling of Aelphaba (the Wicked Witch’s) life is more of a commentary on the nature of evil. Is it a being, an entity in and of itself that thinks and plots like a mad puppeteer out to destroy goodness (i.e. the Devil) or is it the absence of goodness, a power vacuum; or is it a defect, something abnormal like a 6th finger or green skin? All of these questions are posed and never really answered, which could be the sign of a really good story. It’s also a story of the choices we make and how those shape our lives and the lives of our friends and families and how we find the person we’ve become is so far from the person we set out to be.

Wicked is a lot more than I bargained for and I felt enriched, but some may find it hard to get through. While the first half is giggles and childhood fun, the second is murder and consequences, a much more introspective journey through the land of Oz where the adventure happens inside Aelphaba’s mind and soul and not the yellow brick road.

It’s a good read. Check it out. Yeah, I know I'm late, and I loved the play (which is nothing like the book).