Book: "Wicked"

[timepiececlock]

I'm about 4 or 5 hours into the audio recording of Wicked: Life And Times Of the Wicked Witch Of the West, by Gregory Macguire. It's very interesting so far... the language is well-chosen and flowing within a scene, though the overall pacing is sometimes inconsistant.

For instance, we spent an enormous amount of time on Elpheba's family when she's an infant, but then we skip her entire childhood and pick up when she's 17. While I can already tell it was necessary for future plot purposes to explain her family so thoroughly, I feel like we missed out on a lot by not hearing more anecdotes of her childhood and growth. The only major connection between Baby!Elpheba and young-woman Elpheba seems to be her shyness, her teeth, and her green skin. Some necessary transition could have been filled in through stories from her childhood.

Other than some pacing issues, I'm really enjoying it. I imagined, from story descriptions, that it would be a cute if somewhat ironic black satire, something that makes you laugh as it turns the traditional story on its head. Something more like Roald Dahl would write. I expected a book written for young adults, with young adult themes and tropes. While there are shades of that, I was quite surprised to find that it's a book for adults, not teens, and while it goes to great lengths to flip your preconceived notions of Oz and dwells on irony... it takes itself quite seriously. It's set up from the beginning like a tragedy, a sort of Macbeth-style tale. It's themes so far have been such topics as religion, ethics, sin, idolotry, prejudice, classism, evil capitalism, and a general mood of cynicism. It features graphic sexual conversation, mildly graphic sex, gore, and murder.

Right now I'm in the second year of Elpheba's education, and I'm very curious about where the story is going. Some stuff has been foreshadowed (it took me forever to connect Turtleheart's talk of rubies with Dorothy's ruby slippers), while other stuff remains in the dark, and I have a lot of questions still. I hope they'll be answered when I finish it. I'll post about it again when it's done.

Comments

[littleduchess.livejournal.com]

Have you got to the Philosophers Club? That bit really shocked me... I'll let you find out why. But yeah- it's so much darker than the stage show or even the original...

(using icon just cause it's related nothing more (: )

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten to that portion quite yet.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rednovember/]

I read to the 2nd to last chapter and then never finished it.

I assume you've finished it by now but SPOOOILER!:
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Elphaba and that man with the diamond pattern? Their love affair. That always made me really sad for some reason. I don't know why.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I picked it up when I was just old enough to get it, because of the musical--I was maybe fifteen. And it is very, very adult, which scared the snot out of me, but I kept reading. It's one of those books where I reached the end and went OH because suddenly everything made sense 'cause it was one giant conspiracy--and then I couldn't remember everything that led up to it, so I didn't know what it was that made sense. But it did make sense.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I really did think it was a YA book until I started reading it. I'm still in the middle; work has started so I slowed down in my listening time.

[crzysheelf.livejournal.com]

The cynicism is pretty much a theme that goes on right up until the end. But I still love that book with a passion. There's just something about it. The sequel, however, was not so grand, actually a large disappointment, up until like the last page... but then it just kinda drops... I can say no more or else it'll be a huge, ugly spoiler!!!! AHHHHH!!

... ok, I'm done being silly. Happy reading!