Gregory Maguire

I was already in love with the musical before I started Wicked, but this book went above and beyond my own expectations. Compelling in spite of all its sorrow, it’s a fine, fine read.

Maguire’s story meshes so well with the original Oz stories, it’s as if the mythos has become a thing of itself, and Baum only wrote a sanitized version of an older legend, bigger, richer and more in depth. Now imagine Maguire researching the source texts and writing a peripheral view with the original show more darkness and complexities. Please understand that I hate retellings which insist that the original author “got it wrong”-- but Wicked just seems so true.

It’s beautifully written (Maguire’s debut!), with one of the best endings I’ve ever read. It’s also complex and the political unrest in Oz is a brilliant way to use Baum’s own creation as an attack against his racist views. But best of all, it achieves in what many of the best retellings attempt--making the villain the heroine. After all, it is the winners who write the history books. show less

Short summary:
The story follows Elphaba, a girl born with green skin who is treated as strange and different from the moment she enters the world. As she grows up, she never quite fits in and often feels like an outsider. When she goes to Shiz University, she starts forming friendships and begins to see more clearly how the society of Oz works. In particular, she becomes deeply concerned about the treatment of the talking Animals, who are slowly losing their rights and their place in show more society. As Elphaba becomes more involved in questioning what is happening around her, she starts to clash with the authorities and the systems in power. Over time, rumors and misunderstandings begin to shape how others see her, and the world slowly starts to label her as “wicked,” even though her story is far more complicated than that.

Review:
I really loved this book.

Even without knowing The Wizard of Oz or seeing the Wicked movie, the story was still very engaging and easy to get into. It works perfectly well as its own story, and I never felt like I was missing important background knowledge.

What I found most interesting is how complex the world and the characters are. Oz isn’t just a magical setting here. It feels like a real society with politics, prejudice, and power struggles. The storyline about the Animals losing their rights was especially compelling and added a much darker and more serious layer to the story.

Elphaba is also a very interesting main character. She’s intelligent, determined, and deeply concerned about injustice, but she’s also very isolated. Because she looks different and often challenges the system around her, people are quick to misunderstand her. I really liked that the book doesn’t try to make her a perfect hero. She makes difficult choices and sometimes pushes people away, which makes her feel very human.

Another thing I appreciated is how the story slowly shows how someone can gain a reputation that doesn’t fully match who they really are. The idea that a person can be labeled “wicked” by society, even when their intentions are more complicated, is one of the most interesting themes in the book.

The writing also creates a very rich and detailed world. There are political tensions, cultural differences, and philosophical questions throughout the story. Sometimes it feels a bit dense, but overall it makes the world feel much deeper and more believable.

Final Thoughts:
Wicked is a fascinating and complex story that works well even if you have no familiarity with The Wizard of Oz. It explores themes like prejudice, power, and how society decides who is considered a villain. The characters are complicated, the world is richly developed, and the story raises a lot of interesting questions. I really loved reading it. show less

So everyone loves Wicked, right? At least, thats what I've heard. "Wicked's so good!" "An immediate classic!" "A best-selling original novel!" I call Maguire's bluff. I've been fed lies.

I heard of Wicked from the Broadway advertisements. Its super popular, and when its coming to your city, it tends to be EVERYWHERE. You see the TV ads, hear the radio commercials and see the billboards & flyers. People around you have begun reading it, even people you know who you never thought could show more actually read or even knew what a book was. You read reviews and everyone says its "one of the best books I've ever read." I pick this book up and start it and find myself wondering: "What in the heck is wrong with you people?!?! I've been conned!!!" Yep. That's right. I'll say it now: THIS BOOK IS TRASH. Did you hear me? TRASH. In case that doesn't stick, here are some more: Excrement, Garbage, Filth, Junk, Muck, Rubbish, Sewage, Slop, Waste, Atrocious, Awful, Carelessly Written, Crummy, Dissatisfactory, Dreadful, Icky, Junky, Lousy, A Rip-Off, and completely UNACCEPTABLE. What has gotten into people's minds? This "wonderful piece of literature" falls flat in every possible way.

In all honesty, I read only the first part of this book. That's all I could stomach. However, I skimmed the rest and my reading partner finished it off for me and completely filled me in. I read other excerpts and whatnot. So, I am pretty well informed with this book. I might as well have read it, but luckily I was able to salvage whatever willpower I was left with after being subjected to torture of the worse kind. This is poorly written, insubstantial, overly perverted and completely blasphemous. I care nothing for Elphaba...this story doesn't even remotely tell us ANYTHING about her, except that LIKE HER MOTHER, she enjoys an affair. She is wicked, without a doubt, but you never find out why. People were nice to her and she was mean in turn. She had friends, but I guess that wasn't enough for her. She was a vegetarian and LOVED animals. What in the heck went wrong?? No one knows, because Mr. Maguire refused to tell us. It is even states in the text that no one knows why she is wicked, she just is. What the heck am I doing here reading this then? I figured that "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" would at least give us some insight into why the Wicked Witch is the way she is today. I figured she probably was ill-treated when she was young or that something set her off, but seriously? Nothing. No explanation whatsoever. If this was just supposed to be about the way Oz is run then why not entitle it: "Wicked-A Brief Glance at How The Land of Oz is Run and its Citizens." Because, that's all I felt I read about. I found affairs, animal rights activists, selfish leaders, and just overall disgusting writing.

Is this the best book we can be given in this day and age? You would figure that since we, people as a whole, have come so far that we could afford to write better books. In my opinion, I am ashamed to live in an era where people think Wicked is actually worth wasting time on. How pathetic can you get?? I've read some pretty bad books, but this one takes the cake. Thanks very much for making me do this Mr. Maguire. Now I feel I have to take it upon myself to protect all the people who actually read for substance from this book of erroneous bull-monkey. Oh wait, I'm sorry, flying monkey feces. My apologies.

This book doesn't actually deserve a star, but as it is, Goodreads does not allow me to do that. I'm actually doing an injustice by just handing that star over. So, do yourselves a favor and don't even bother with Wicked. Just look it up and read a synopsis, because reading the book won't give you anymore than that. I am really glad I borrowed this from the library and didn't waste any money.

P.S. Mr. Maguire: Cheap shots at the Church do not a good book make! show less

The title is the absolute epitome of what this novel is: a kaleidoscope of conflicting contradictions. Is it a literal description of us readers following Alice and the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole? Is After Alice instead an acknowledgement that we can't ever return to the state of innocence that was children's literature before the world experienced Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Or rather is it a modern retelling based on Alice, a meditation on the themes the classic suggests but show more rewritten for a 21st-century readership? Perhaps it is all of these things, or even none of them.

In fact, is it about Alice at all? Was the Alice of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland the historical Alice Liddell or merely a literary persona, and are any of these the same as the Alice of Maguire's novel, whom we discover is actually one Alice Clowd? As Carroll's Alice remarked, curiouser and curiouser. Lots of questions, then, in search of answers.

We soon discover that this is a tale that fluctuates between three or four youngsters, none of whom have anything to do with Dean Liddell's children except that their story is set in Oxford one midsummer, sometime in the 1860s. Maguire gives us some early clues: for example, 4th July 1862 -- when Carroll took the Liddell sisters boating -- is identified as being 'cool and rather wet' but in Alice in Wonderland and in After Alice we are presented with an idyllic if somnolent midsummer's day. Then there is Ada, a friend of Carroll's Alice who gets a passing reference in Wonderland -- here we have an Ada Boyce, but she's a friend of a different Alice, Alice Clowd. The elder sister of this Alice, whom we spy reading the famous book "without pictures" (identified as A Midsummer Night's Dream), is Lydia Clowd, not Lorinna Liddell. All this is enough to chase away any supposition that this is a story centred on either the real Alice or the fictional one.

In trying to escape from her governess, Miss Armstrong, Ada Boyce inadvertently falls down a hole. Her iron corset, designed to straighten her spine, falls off her and she enters a Wonderland very similar to that described in Alice in Wonderland: one full of contradictions, plays on language, metamorphosing creatures and contrary characters. Ada soon finds herself on the track of her friend Alice Clowd, who is always a step or two ahead of her. Along the way she meets up with Siam, the ward of a young American, who has also found his way into this Wonderland, though he has come via a looking glass in the Clowd household. Meanwhile, above ground, Lydia starts to look for her missing sister Alice, joining Miss Armstrong looking for Ada, missions that will prove to be fruitless.

Already the reader is liable to be confused. Where Carroll had just one protagonist meeting fantastical personages Maguire chooses to present the points of view of three children -- Ada, Lydia and Siam -- with significant roles played by Miss Armstrong and by the elusive Alice. What with Maguire imitating and almost trying to outdo Carroll in punning and wordplay, his attempt to divide our interest between several individuals proves too much at times, as does the to and fro of action above as well as below ground.

Remembering that the first Alice book began life as Alice's Adventures Underground I totally understand that the author is trying to play on different notions of 'underground', as he has explained in an interview. These are the mythical associations of the land of the dead, plus technological change in 1860s London (the laying of the sewers and the development of the underground railway). But Maguire is also keen to introduce the concept of the underground railroad, the escape route for Black American slaves fleeing from exploitation and persecution (which is where the character Siam comes in). This last theme seems to me, as it has done for many other readers, a tacked-on idea which is poorly and inconsequentially integrated into the plot, however worthy the conception.

In fact, all the extraneous material -- the appearances of an unnamed Charles Dodgson and the Liddell siblings (in a boat), plus a named Charles Darwin, for example -- appears not only superfluous but also too clever by half. And what of the sly suggestion that Miss Armstrong is somehow responsible for the attempted drowning of her charge and her friend? It all seems somehow meaningless, like a ghost image on a photographic negative. There is, granted, an underlying theme of emancipation -- of Victorian females from their literal and metaphorical straitjackets and Afro-Americans from forced enslavement -- but little of this seems to relate to the Carrollian witticisms peppering the conversations Ada has with Wonderland denizens. And when it comes down to the bottom line, what is the point of trying to ape Lewis Carroll's originality?

Clearly, Maguire is aware that he may be castigated for indulging in such presumptuous behaviour; he says in chapter 14, as an apologia, that a "story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader;" but I suspect from what follows that this particular story has also passed the author by. Elsewhere -- chapter 30 to be precise -- he muses on Oxford as an inspiration for much literature ("perhaps we love our Oxford because it seems eternal," he declares) though After Alice is not at all in the same league as the examples he cites.

After Alice is, in the last analysis, scattergun in its execution and leaves the reader wandering in their own Wonderland: why was this written, they will ask themselves. For me an answer may lie in a response he makes in the previously mentioned online interview.*

His mother, he tells us,

died in childbirth leaving my father as a widower and four children. I was the infant; I was seven days old when she hemorrhaged and died. And that is how every fairytale begins. The child is thrown into the perilous world—to use a phrase of Blake's—a child is thrown into a perilous world by the death of a parent.

Fairytales read in childhood therefore "felt like veiled biographies of me." In After Alice the Clowd family have lost their mother, leaving the widower father with one daughter who regularly disappears into an imaginary world and another who feels the responsibility of being the mistress of the house. Ada Boyce meanwhile struggles with a mother who exists in an alcoholic haze, a noisy newborn child and a governess who has issues of her own -- no wonder she chafes against restrictions, whether being chaperoned when she leaves the house or having to wear her hideous orthopaedic corset. Finally, young Siam, following an inhumane and cruel childhood, has been rescued and brought to an alien country -- we can only guess why he might be tempted to retreat into an imaginary world rather than exist in a real one where nothing makes much sense.

Maguire tells us he has never got over being "fascinated by the plight of children who have to make their way in a hostile, and unwelcoming, and ungenerous world, and yet do it anyway and survive." This, it seems to me, is what this novel is struggling to voice; that it fails to do so in any decisive way means it lacks the emotional heart that would justify the rehash of an already perfect classic.
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* published by Broadly. show less