Wicked - Gregory Maguire
There were a few reasons I was attracted to this book initially. I was aware of the West End/ Broadway show adaptation (although I haven’t seen it… yet) and I’m very aware of The Wizard of Oz, I mean, who isn’t?! Also, the cover is pretty damn cool. I’d been eyeing this book and its sequels (Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men) for some time waiting for them to come on a 3 for 2 and thus give me an excuse to purchase them, but no such luck befell me, and so I (well, my boyfriend…) had to pay the full recommended retail price for it. And I’m not disappointed that he did.
The notion behind this book is less than genius. Writers have been telling the “hidden stories” of fictional villains for years already. Maguire himself, prior to Wicked, has written novels about the Ugly Stepsisters of Cinderella and the evil Queen of Snow White, probably establishing himself quite firmly within this genre but not to the best of my knowledge, the pioneer of it. The basis of what Gregory Maguire does is nothing out of the imaginative ordinary. But what he does within the pages is definitely more than extraordinary.
It starts right from the second you turn the cover. Printed on the inside is a map of Maguire’s Oz. L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and 13 sequels between 1900 and his death in 1919, laid down the essential elements both in terms of character and the geography of the land, but the imagination of a man who can translate these basics into a physical map is very desirable. Maguire’s skill at this is not unique; I have come across authors who depict maps of their fantasy lands as part of their work several times throughout my experience of literature; but is nevertheless valuable. I found having this map an incredibly useful aide throughout this novel when it came to geographically positioning things. In a fantasy land, place names that resemble nothing that we are used to can become very confusing unless you have something to refer back to.
The geographical layout of Oz is not the only thing of Baum’s that Maguire took and ran with to turn Wicked into the literary joy that it is. While I have not read the original novel or any of its sequels, I feel that, from what little research I have done, it is safe to assume that the names of the most important characters, Elphaba, Glinda and Nessarose, were pre-decided almost a century before the idea of this novel was even conceived.What Maguire has done with the restrictions he faced, with this in mind, is even more astonishing.
His development of Elphaba from the baby who has to be restrained to prevent her from chewing herself to pieces, the toddler whose first word, “horrors”, seems to seal the fate of her entire life, to the student turned political activist and terrorist, to her final fate as the Wicked Witch of the West, is incredible. My experience of The Wizard of Oz is such that I would never have thought to develop the character of the Wicked Witch of the West. She is the traditional fairytale villain; the evil to counter the good of the Witch of the North, the West to counter the Wicked Witch of the East. What does it matter where she came from and what made her so evil? If Maguire’s account is anything to go by, it matters greatly. After reading Wicked, it is impossible to think of Elphaba as “evil” pe say. The trials of her life, growing up an outsider in every aspect, her lost love, her futile battle for salvation, all thoroughly prevent any reader from having anything but pity for Elphaba by the end of the novel. And for that, for tipping the concept of the fairytale villain completely on its head and demanding justification and motivation for the characters actions, Maguire can only be praised.
And he deserves all the praise he gets. But that said, I still have some criticisms of Maguire’s written style in Wicked. While I am completely in favour of omission of scenes to build tension and drive the plot, one normally expects the events contained by the scenes that were omitted to be explained eventually; this expectation is often what drives one onwards and forces them to progress through the novel. When the narrator of Wicked, who may or may not be Maguire himself, never more than off-handedly refers to omitted scenes that could have made for absolutely riveting reading, such as the sacrifice of Turtle Heart and, later, the grisly murder of Fiyero, I found myself, as the reader, feeling unsatisfied. I wanted to know what happened in those excluded times of Elphaba’s childhood, aside from the (slightly boring and closely described) attempts by Frex to convert the Quadlings to Unionism, that led to Turtle Heart’s sacrifice. I want to know how Fiyero died, and what happened to his body, that made Elphaba take refuge from the world in a convent of a silent order. Perhaps this is just my sadistic side longing to witness the suffering of others, or maybe these omissions are genuinely dissatisfying.
I also found that I started to lose interest in Wicked just before the end. While I had raced through most of the novel, after the “murder” of Madame Morrible, the mesmerising hold this novel had had on me for 452 pages began to peter out. I had, by this point, realised that I was never going to find out what happened to Fiyero (the later notion that he could be disguised as the scarecrow is too absurd to consider) or why Turtle Heart had to be sacrificed, and so I just wanted to get to the end so as not to leave it unfinished. The description of Elphaba’s death is, well, a bit nothingy. It neither confirms that Elphaba was right to deny the existence of the soul and the afterlife, or suggests that she was wrong. Maguire’s attempt in the final chapter to conclude the novel neatly by re-establishing equilibrium to Oz as the “human” influences of the Wizard, Dorothy, and (to an extent), Elphaba are removed is weak, lacks catharsis and leaves behind it an eerie sense of “what now?”. It all just seems anticlimactic in relation to what has preceded it, both in the novel itself and in the hype that accompanies it as prequel to The Wizard of Oz.
Wicked is very difficult to write about without spoiling the plot for those who have not yet experienced the joys of this novel, and I do have slight concerns that in trying to avoid this, I have either given away too much or written a rubbish critique. The underlying message I hoped to convey is that Wicked is a fantastic piece of storytelling, but Maguire hasn’t quite yet mastered the art of keeping his reader on their toes without leaving them dissatisfied by the lack of account of what could well be the juiciest bits the novel has to offer. This would be a novel I would recommend with caution. It’s definitely enjoyable, but not without its faults. I am still asking “what happened next?!”
But I suppose that’s what I will learn from Son of a Witch…
Maguire, Gregory [1995] Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (2006) London: Headline Publishing Group
