Wicked

I never did get around to reviewing the book I mentioned the other evening. To put you out of the abject misery and longing you've no doubt been experiencing since, here are my thoughts (or some of them at least) on:

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire.

I would have hated this book in my formative years. I was a tidy youth, you see, believing that everything had it's proper place and a proper explanation for it it's being. And every story had it's proper ending - not just a place where the words stop flowing, but where all the wends and windings of the plot were gathered up and neatly tied together. Where justice was served, the villianous punished and good feted.

In Wicked, where one of the major themes running through the book is the nature of good and evil, the question of who, if anyone, gets what they deserve in the end is left largely up to the reader to decide. As a child I would have hated it, but obviously I'm hardly a child anymore (though I loved the book, as I finally decided, I may harbour a little animus towards it for making me come to that realisation).

Anyway - it's been a while since I've had cause to review a book in any depth, so forgive my meanderings thus far and let me describe the book a little.

Wicked is the tale of the Wicked Witch Of The West, recast as Shakespearian tragedy and told from the Witches perspective. The story follows the Witch from the peculiar circumstances of her birth, up to the her ultimate demise at the hands of the interloper Dorothy. Whilst it's easy to imagine the story of the Witch being told as broad farce, with the Witch once more taking the role of pantomime villianess, Wicked takes an entirely different approach and instead examines it's subject with deathly seriousness. What would it be like to grow up the only child with green skin, not only to be unable to touch water, but to be stung by your own tears. How would your preacher father react to being saddled with a cursed child?

So strength of book rests on the characteristation of Elphaba, the eventual and reluctant Witch, who is sketched with immense depth. Part of that depth likely derives from Maguires reluctance to fill in too many details, and whilst hints are dropped (such as the nature of Elphaba's true lineage), others remain shrouded in mystery (why is her skin Green, who is the peculiar Yackle who seems to have a hand in so many pivotal events, what is the nature of the Grimmerie coveted by the Wizard). But despite this, and despite her occassionally thorny temperament, Elphaba quickly becomes a character you cannot help but empathise with, such that in the end it's all to easy to feel a genuine sense of loss at her fate.

In a book where trying to discern the nature of good and evil is a major theme, it's worth pointing out that Maguire casts the land of Oz as much as the despotic Wizard as her opposite number. Here the portrayal of Oz could not be further from the fantasy paradise envisioned by Frank L. Baum. This Oz is a land torn by war, filled with misery and oppression and overseen by the distant, corrupt Wizard. It is the mirror against which the Witch views and defines herself and her actions are inevitablely shaped by confrontation with it. From her forays as a student activist, to her part in a terrorist cell attemptying a coup, until her eventual ascension to a reluctant leader in vehement opposition to the Wizard, it is her attempt to change Oz that rules Elphaba's actions.

Wicked is not without it's plot contrivances, perhaps inevitable in a book which attempts to integrate itself within such a well known story, but I found such foibles easy to forgive. Harder to forgive is the final act in which Ephaba's actions become increasingly erratic, setting the stage for her eventual fall. Here, and perhaps here alone, do Elphaba's actions seem out of character and we begin to see Maguire tugging the strings in a particular direction.

Still in the end Wicked is the book I've most enjoyed reading for a great while now (the last book that evoked similar feelings in me was The Magicians Assistant by Ann Patchett, also a book I highly recommend). Be warned that this is not a happy book, and the ending is depressingly inevitable. But Maguires' beautiful turns of phrase, coupled with his complex, heartfelt protagonist make a winning combination.

For me at least.