Book Report

Oz is one of my favorite places to visit - right up there with Wonderland, Narnia and Middle Earth - so I was skeptical when I heard about Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Too often, spin-off stories are badly written milking machines that exist to drain the last few drops from a beloved cash cow of a fairy tale, and I assumed this was just another hack job. A decade after the book's initial release I finally broke down and read it, and I'm here to say I was wrong.

On the surface it is what the title says - the life of the Wicked Witch of the West. It's her life story from before her birth to the moment of her death, and it clearly demonstrates that perspective is everything and there are always two sides to a situation. But it is so much more than an alternate fairy tale, and does so much more than amuse.

This is one of the most brilliant works of fiction I've ever read. Gregory Macguire manages to incorporate topics such as religious persecution, racism, love, political corruption, family dysfunction and the true nature of evil... all without any semblance of a saccharine after-school special. The moral and theological questions raised serve to bring you deeper into the inner lives of the characters while inspiring you to ponder your own feelings on complex issues. There's a definite sense the author is an Orwell fan, as the story is colored as much by its source material as by 1984 and even a hint of Animal Farm. But that's not so say it's derivative - on the contrary, it's wildly imaginative and intellectually engaging.

Brilliant story aside, the prose itself is a work of art. The carefully crafted language had me aching with jealousy, wishing I had the skill to write something half so glorious. I make my living as a wordsmith, I pride myself on my vocabulary, and I was both humbled and thrilled to find myself consulting the dictionary more than once to confirm the meaning of some rarely used yet exquisitely apropos word the author wove flawlessly into the tale.

Even though you know how it ends, how it has to end given the title character, I was stunned and hurt when the end finally came. I found myself crying over the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. And that, I think, is the brilliance of this story.