Gregory Maguire<\/a> include: slut shaming; puppet porn; mob violence and a pretty detailed childbirth. This book is very much not for children. It is so much better, darker and more politically complex than I had expected from having seen the musical years ago on the West End.<\/p>\nThis is not a sweet and light tale of female friendship regretfully torn apart by loving the same man. It\u2019s a politically complex novel about the spread of right-wing ideology and one woman who finds that not playing along with the majority opinion comes at a high cost. Put another way, it\u2019s Elphaba\u2019s story, from birth to death.<\/p>\n
Oz is a land slowly falling to a dictator \u2013 the Wizard \u2013 who is sowing hate and discord to divide and conquer the four previously autonomous regions around Emerald City. Elphaba is the daughter of a preacher and a woman who is already unhappy before her first child is born with green skin. Everyone fears her, child and adult.<\/p>\n
Elphaba\u2019s lonely childhood is followed by a few happy years at university. She makes friends, including Galinda, but their physical and financial disparities contribute to them never truly seeing eye to eye. It seems that Elphaba\u2019s only real friend is Boq, but even he isn\u2019t as fully committed as she is to campaigning for the rights of sentient Animals.<\/p>\n\n\u201cThings are not always as they seem. And it has been clear for some time that the Wizard\u2019s bag of tricks would not do forever. There are bound to be popular uprisings \u2013 the stupid, senseless kind, in which strong dumb people enjoy getting killed for the sake of political changes that\u2019ll be rolled back within the decade. Adds such meaning to meaningless lives, don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Capital-A Animals are slowly being stripped of their rights. It\u2019s a pretty clear metaphor for how historical (and current-day) fascism always starts with a hate campaign against a group already vulnerable to distrust and dislike. Misinformation is spread about them. Most Ozlanders are indifferent, just looking the other way as Animals are harassed, mocked, lose their jobs, lose their citizenship.<\/p>\n
Halfway through her time at university, Galinda changes her name to Glinda, Elphaba is joined by her younger sister Nessarose and new kid Fiyero comes along. He\u2019s attractive but he\u2019s also engaged to a girl back home, so romance isn\u2019t an option. The main thrust of the novel here is the sisters\u2019 fractious relationship getting in the way of what was just starting to be true friendship between Elphaba and Glinda. Nessarose believes everything her father ever said and is a follower of rules. She is also severely physically disabled. Both of which somewhat curtail Elphaba\u2019s extracurricular exploits.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cGlinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren\u2019t you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they\u2019re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us\u2026It\u2019s people who claim that they\u2019re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
After university Elphaba and Glinda part ways and that\u2019s the end of their friendship. But it\u2019s not the end of either of their stories. Elphaba goes to Emerald City to work for an underground resistance cell. She bumps into Fiyero and they become close. This is the most hopeful part of the novel, though the threat of something terrible always looms over Elphie.<\/p>\n
And then the worst happens and Elphaba spends the rest of her life filled with doubt and guilt, gradually embracing the role of \u201cwicked witch\u201d. Though whether she ever actually does anything deliberately wicked is left open to interpretation. And she has a dog she loves, so she can\u2019t be truly evil, right?<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe cook had a dog named Killyjoy who seemed to Elphie to be a Makejoy instead, a panting, sniffy thing. Some people thought for a time he might actually be a Dog, in hiding, but they gave up that idea. \u2018Hah,\u2019 Elphie said to the others, \u2018have you spoken to Animals so seldom that you can\u2019t remember the difference anymore?\u2019 No, he was just a dog, but a most glorious doggy dog, full of rages and exaggerated devotions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This book contains humour and great characters, but it is also sad and dark, sometimes oppressively so. It\u2019s a grimly fascinating, scarily relatable story about the rise of fascism and the demonisation of those who try to stand up to corruption.<\/p>\n
In a couple of places the narrative skips several years, which is disconcerting and does require a certain amount of piecing together what you\u2019ve missed. Which is partly deliberate, to hold back information from the reader. But this is already a long book so maybe Maguire made some judicious edits. This is the first of several books he has published<\/a> about the world of Oz, riffing from Frank L Baum\u2019s original series of Oz books<\/a> but taking what was a very child-oriented, politics-free universe in a rather different direction. Just this month he\u2019s publishing Elphie: a Wicked Childhood<\/i>, which presumably plugs the giant gap that Wicked<\/i> skips in her younger years. I\u2019m definitely curious.<\/p>\nFirst published 1995 by Regan Books.<\/p>\n
Source: Amazon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As if to prove his point in his author\u2019s introduction, the first few chapters of Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire include: slut shaming; puppet porn; mob violence and a pretty detailed childbirth. This book is very much not for children. It is so much better, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[2268,47762,2159,26963,840,26964,3749,10542],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-150456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-dictatorship","tag-fantasy","tag-gregory","tag-magic","tag-maguire","tag-review","tag-wicked"],"yoast_head":"\n
Book review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=150456\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As if to prove his point in his author\u2019s introduction, the first few chapters of Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire include: slut shaming; puppet porn; mob violence and a pretty detailed childbirth. This book is very much not for children. 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![\"Wicked](\"https:\/\/noseinabook.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wicked-200x304.jpg\")
As if to prove his point in his author\u2019s introduction, the first few chapters of Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West<\/i> by Gregory Maguire<\/a> include: slut shaming; puppet porn; mob violence and a pretty detailed childbirth. This book is very much not for children. It is so much better, darker and more politically complex than I had expected from having seen the musical years ago on the West End.<\/p>\n