Title: Wicked: The Life and the Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Author: Gregory Maguire
# of Pages: 406 (paperback)
Genre: Adult, Fantasy
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?
Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
Review: As a long-time fan of the musical and with the recent release of the part 1 movie adaptation, this seemed as good a time as any to finally read the original source material.
It's very important to know that the musical/movie is a VERY LOOSE adaptation of this book. I went into this reading with the goal to:
- Compare the book and the musical (identify what's different/missing)
- Appreciate the decisions made by Maguire vs writers/lyricists of Wicked to tell a similar story in their respective medium
This review assumes spoilers comparing the book to the musical/movie is NOT a spoiler, proceed with caution.
I already knew the following qualities/popular perspective of the book that I ended up agreeing with upon finishing:
1. The book delves deeper on the politics/racism/classism.
In the musical/movie, Elphaba is the only one who is exaggeratedly ostracized based on her appearance, despite featuring a diverse cast. It was more realistic in the book that most of Oz struggled with accepting difference between people from different areas, even those from "Winkie" country where the popular Fiyero from the musical is from are looked down upon by other people in Oz (including musical love interest Glinda, who in the book explicitly cites the color of Fiyero's skin as a reason to not have had an affair with him).
The Wizard and Madame Morrible are more totalitarian in the book than the musical. I actually preferred the musical's interpretation of these characters because they were more nuanced than blatantly power tripping as they are in the book.
The book describes more of Oz, including Quadling Country which is perceived as being less advanced economically and technologically, thus inferior and is seen throughout the book as a class of people to disregard at best and take advantage of at worst. The political parts of the book were actually heavier than I expected, already indicating that the book is less family friendly than the musical/movie.
2. The book features beastiality.
Obviously there none of this in the PG movie/musical. But I heard before reading that this book was "weird" and goes into "graphic" detail about sex with animals. With my expectations basically set to "beastiality smut", I actually didn't think it was prevelant enough to require that much of a fuss about it. There's mainly this one scene where theres beastiality rape, and there are some details about how it happens. It's definitely not something kids should be reading, but this is something that most young adults should be able to handle.
However, there were still differences that surprised me:
1. Elphaba was portrayed to be even more "different" than she is in the musical.
The musical has the color of her skin be her primary difference with her peers (which is clearer messaging of the racism theme). The book goes farther to make her different by giving her razor sharp teeth as a newborn and even bring into debate her gender at least twice. It's unclear whether these differences are meant to be taken literally or if this is because of unreliable narrators (there's third person POV switching), but giving her sharp teeth made her seem more like a monster rather than a protagonist people could sympathize with.
2. The main characters (Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, Boq, Nessarose) are not as interconnected as they are in the musical.
This is more realistic than having everyone pair off (or create a love triangle) like they do in the musical, but it introduces a lot more "extra" characters that are not important to the driving plot. I can appreciate Maguire keeping the tin man's origin story true to The Wizard of Oz book. I actually liked the how these characters are related to the origin stories of the scarecrow and tin man in the musical, and we get a happier ending in the musical compared to the book.
3. There's a drawn out period where Elphaba is in The Vinkus in the book that is completely cut out from the musical.
I think the musical made the right decision for this one. While this helps justify how Elphaba becomes "The Wicked With of the West" (since Vinkus is in western Oz) in the book, there's not much that actually happen. The little character development that does happen could have been included but with much less pages.
For a book of this length written in this denser fantasy style (and being a relatively older book, originally published in 1995), I was surprised how gripping and fast the read was, and almost gave it four stars. However, I think if I was not already a fan of the musical, it would have been hard for me to keep track of the characters, the different areas of Oz, etc, and I would have been less engaged without having something to compare the story against. This in addition to having third person POV switching which caused parts of the story to drag made me give the three star rating.
I don't plan to read the rest of the series and would only recommend reading if you're already interested in the movie/musical AND have expectations that the book will tell a very different story.
