Culture

Author: Gregory Maguire. Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (5/5)
When I finished reading Wicked at 2.30am the other morning, I felt like a gold seeker panning a river and finding the mother lode. Not that I suggest good novels are as rare as gold nuggets, but this book will move you in ways unimaginable. Stop. If you have not read The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, go do it now, before reading this review and definitely before reading Wicked. Construct your image of Elphaba, the wicked witch of the west in the aforementioned children’s classic in the way Baum intended – her unnatural green skin colour, her evil nature.  Rejoice in her death at the hands of Dorothy. Then read Wicked, and watch your carefully constructed images of both Oz and the witch crumble before you.
 

Maguire’s novel takes place in the land of Oz, well before Dorothy’s dramatic entrance. In fact Dorothy features only in the last few chapters of the novel, and with tragic consequences for the heroine of the story, Elphaba. It is really a book of three parts. Firstly Elphaba’s dysfunctional family upbringing, her university years at Shiz and “conversion” to an anti-totalitarian resistance fighter in the Emerald City (the autocrat funnily enough being the Wizard of Oz). Secondly, the rather flat middle part of the book details Elphaba’s flight from the Emerald City to the Arjiki homeland of her murdered lover. And finally, the last part of the book deals once more with Elphaba’s family - the ties that bind us, what can be forgiven, and what can’t.
 

This is no children’s fairy tale. Sure, “animals” talk and have consciousness where normal animals don’t. There are spells and elves and dwarves. But ultimately we are presented with a deeply philosophical and moving novel of a woman fighting for the freedom of the oppressed, a woman who stands for the convictions and morals which she holds to be true yet what come at a terrible cost to her. We are left angry – angry at the injustice of everything the book throws at us, angry at Baum for ever presenting Elphaba in a way other than Maguire’s, and perhaps angry at ourselves for ever believing Baum, that we were so easily duped by green skin, a cackling laugh and a flying broom.