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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years) [Mass Market Paperback]

Gregory Maguire (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying?and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years. Dorothy appears only near novel's end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas?as well as the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion?and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; first serial to Word; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

YA?Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, has gotten a bum rap. Her mother is embarrassed and repulsed by her bright-green baby with shark's teeth and an aversion to water. At college, the coed experiences disapproval and rejection by her roommate, Glinda, a silly girl interested only in clothes, money, and popularity. Elphaba is a serious and inquisitive student. When she learns that the Wizard of Oz is politically corrupt and causing economic ruin, Elphaba finds a sense of purpose to her life?to stop him and to restore harmony and prosperity to the land. A Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, and an unknown species called a "Dorothy" appear in very small roles... The story presents Elphaba in a sympathetic and empathetic manner-readers will want her to triumph! The conclusion, however, is the same as L. Frank Baum's. The book has both idealism and cynicism in its discussion of social, religious, educational, and political issues present in Oz, and, more pointedly, present in our day and time. The idealism is whimsical and engaging; the cynicism is biting. Sometimes the earthy language seems appropriate and adds to the sense of place; sometimes the four-letter words and sexual explicitness distract from the charm of the tale. The multiple threads to the plot proceed unevenly, so that the pace of the story jumps rather than moves steadily forward. Wicked is not an easy rereading of The Wizard of Oz. It is for good readers who like satire, and love exceedingly imaginative and clever fantasy.?Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Harper (September 25, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0061350966
  • ISBN-13: 978-0061350962
  • Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,692 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #99 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

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Gregory Maguire
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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years) by Gregory Maguire Mass Market Paperback 3.5 out of 5 stars (1,692)
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686 of 752 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Raises disturbing questions about nature of evil, November 26, 1999
By Growllingbear (Half Moon Bay, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Paperback)
If you can find a better bang for the buck than Wicked, please let me know. I picked up Wicked, knowing nothing except that its subject matter was the Wicked Witch of the West, to be drawn immediately into Maguire's splendidly imagined world of sentient animals, multiple societies, and unique physical laws. Wicked is an enthralling, great read, hugely entertaining. On top of all this, Maguire has Bradbury's gift for creating atmosphere. The pages are heavy with dark, mysterious magic; its moral laws are ultimately incomprehensible.

Apparently doomed at conception, Elphaba is a truly terrifying infant. Razor-toothed and preternaturally intelligent, she is shunned from birth as a freak and a curse. She is nonetheless the tale's most complex, human, and compelling character, possessed of high moral sense and great courage. But neither of these qualities enables a single one of her brave, ethical actions to succeed. What are we to conclude from this?

How is it that Dorothy, the sturdy little nobody from nowhere who committed manslaughter as she landed in Oz, skips down the Yellow Brick Road impervious to danger while Elphaba strives and plots to reap only negative results?

Why is one protected while the other is doomed? Read Wicked and you will learn how the witch's monkeys became winged, where the rubies for those slippers came from, and, indeed, why the witch's skin was green. But you will wrestle, long afterward, with Maguire's moral pessimism and the snarl of grace and doom that underlies this novel. I know I will.

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86 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A richly detailed story that only gets better., November 16, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Paperback)
I must start this review by saying that it is certainly not a book you can take lightly. It takes some serious effort to stick with it, particularly once you get about half way through and the more light-hearted experiences of Elphaba, the wicked witch, at Shiz fade into her darker, secretive experiences at the Emerald City. After two failed attempts to tackle to book, fascinated by the subject matter both times, I finally got through it, inspired to read it because of the Broadway musical based on the book that I found myself mesmerized by (go see it, despite how different it is).

The book is a richly textured account of the life of the Wicked Witch of the West, here given an actual name, Elphaba, as she moves from student at Shiz University, an outcast and roommate to G(a)linda, to secretive activist in the Emerald City, to maunt (nun), to Auntie Witch, later to become The Wicked Witch of the West.

Throughout, the detailed religion, culture, and government of Oz supplement the narrative beautifully, adding depth to what could have been simply an unfounded story of what could happen to some flatly portrayed green girl from Oz. This story really makes you care for the witch and understand that even the most evil of people could simply be the victims of chance.

I thought the book began and ended very strongly, but the narrative sagged a bit in the middle, particularly as Elphaba becomes a nun and travels rather boringly across the desert to the Winkie stronghold of Kiamo Ko. The story stays rather low-key for a while, but picks up when some more familiar characters, such as Nessarose, Elphaba's sister, Elphaba's father, Frexspar, and Glinda, reenter the novel. From this point out, the novel receives its well-deserved finale, in which it goes out with a bold glory rarely seen in novels.

Of course, no life is without its dull moments, and even these are not completely flat. The prose is witty and never becomes to boorish. What really mesmerized me was fitting together the story in this novel into the context of the original Oz book and movie of the same (revised) name.

I would reccomend this to someone who has quite a bit of undistracted time. It's important not to take very long breaks in reading this novel, as the details become more important toward the end, when the witch begins looking back upon her life. The novel should be a very interesting read for anyone familiar with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum or the movie from MGM. Its richly detailed characters and interesting plot choices make for a wonderful read that you're surely not soon to forget. Tough it out through the middle so you can finish this great book.

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68 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious...bloated...boring beyond belief....see the show instead., August 8, 2007
By EquiPro (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Paperback)
I've read many of the reviews of Wicked and I just don't get it.

So many, even when they revile the plot, the content, the story itself, deem Mr. Maguire a "literary genius" with words. I see none of that. In a great story, especially one of fantasy, we should feel swept away by the tale, captivated by the writer's language and enveloped by every sentence. Instead of creating this safe haven for us to enjoy by making his words RELATIBLE, he seems to go out of his way to show us what fancy verbiage he can pull off, regardless of whether it improves the story for it's reader or not. It doesn't.

I'm not impressed by Mr. Maguire's vocabulary. In fact, it is one of the most annoying parts of an amazingly annoying book.

These are my complaints, along with the verbiage issue:

1) Mr. Maguire makes the book excessively complicated by adding in made-up factors which are essential to the plot, but which he never explains to us,
regardless of how verbose he is.

For example, by the time I was 2/3 of the way through, I realized that I still didn't understand the "time dragon" or any of the religions or basic politics that are so crucial to his story. He never bothers to explain these things, but carries on long, boring conversations between his characters that revolve around them. It's like sitting down to a meal with 20 people speaking a foreign language. After a while it just exhausting and mind numbing.

2) Mr. Maguire jumps around - usually just when things are getting good.

We spend goodness-knows how many pages dealing with Elphaba and her family before she even utters her first word and then, just when the plot FINALLY goes somewhere...*poof*....she 17 and off to college. This happens continually. I kept thinking that it was going to become some sort of cliff-hanger where he goes back and we get to REALLY hear the good stuff. Nope. He moves on and that's it. Where's the payoff for the reader? We put up with all of that blah, blah, blah and then he just SKIPS ahead when it gets good?

HE DOES THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME. Beware. You have been warned.

3) He skips the interesting characters and spends pages and pages on the ones that you could care less about.

In another one of his jumps, we never know what happens to Elphaba's TRUE father because it just ends with all of the characters in limbo, then, in a passing phrase, we find out that he was murdered - something to do with that 'ole time dragon again. Then he's on to something else. Hundreds and hundreds of words and pages have gone plodding by, and one of the more interesting things gets nothing more than a passing reference.

4) He spends pages and pages on THINGS that you don't care about, describing them into minutia with his wordy, verbose language.

I think that if I had had to read one more word about Elphaba's journey to the castle, I was going to tear my hair out. The description went on and on and was so boring and wordy. Blech. Skip that stuff! Geeze - tell us the GOOD stuff. Tell us exactly how they killed Fiero. Oh, I forgot, he skipped that part.

5) Elphaba is nasty, annoying and never grows emotionally.

Get some therapy, Elphi. Her POV was just annoying, hardly sympathetic. Obviously, after she learned to speak , she simply became a teenager and never grew past that.

6) The sex scenes and the violence are dull. Just because there is sex between humans and other species doesn't make it good reading or erotic. It's been done before and CERTAINLY done much better.

and the very worst thing:

THERE IS NO PAYOFF. NONE! I hung in there, and hung in there hoping that he would wrap things up and explain things at some point and give SOME sort of emotional satisfaction for having dealt with pages and pages and hours and hours of his slog, and he just rushes through the Dorothy part and it's over. I'm furious.

Overall, I hated it. I'm astounded that so many liked it. I regret picking it up. Unlike others, I wish that I could give it "no stars" - the writer's ability create an imaginary world should be a given and he gets no credit for that from me.

SEE THE SHOW: The broadway show is wonderful and amazing. It is everything that this book is not. However, don't go thinking that they have much in common, because they don't. The plot in the show makes sense, is interesting (far more interesting than the plot in the book), creates characters with whom you really become involved AND gives you a GREAT payoff in the end, explaining things in a MUCH better way and giving you a WONDERFUL and different point of view of the whole story of Oz. The show is one of the best that I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few. Don't miss Julie Murney as Elphaba, if you get a chance.

THE SHOW: 2 THUMBS UP, 4 STARS, DON'T MISS IT!

THE BOOK: 2 thumbs down, 0 stars, skip it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting reflection on evil
While this novel takes the traditional Wizard of Oz tale, the interesting thing about is not the alterations to the story line, but the questions raised by the author. Read more
Published 18 days ago by Telling Nite

5.0 out of 5 stars Gregory Maguire's Magnum Opus
A century after its publication, "The Wizard of Oz" remains an American classic and perhaps the quintessential American fairy tale. Read more
Published 20 days ago by JME2

2.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing
It was with much anticipation that I settled down to begin Wicked. It seemed to be exactly my kinda thing - a retelling of a classic, from the "bad guy's" point of view... Read more
Published 23 days ago by xenofan

5.0 out of 5 stars How did he do that?
The author pulls off an amazing story. Throughout the book you find the innocent Elphaba slowly gathering around herself the things that make her a terrible witch, but they are... Read more
Published 27 days ago by apeters

5.0 out of 5 stars very satisified customer
I received this item it was well packaged and arrive within days of ordering. I am very satisified with my purchase. AAA+++
Published 1 month ago by blackcherryfare

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth depends on who is telling it
I jumped on the "Wicked is Awesome!" bandwagon fairly late (I just read this last summer; the novel came out in 1995). Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sara A. Pauff

4.0 out of 5 stars Review from Mrs. Magoo Reads
Title: Wicked
Author: Gregory Maguire
Grade: A
Ideal Audience: Boys & Girls, 13 to Adults

Summary: From the moment Elphaba was born- with green skin... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. Magoo

5.0 out of 5 stars Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the west
Great book!!! I can't wait to finish so I can get the next book and see what is happening.
Published 1 month ago by Tracie Proffitt

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not the movie, it's WAY better
If you loved the Wizard of Oz movie, you have to read this book! The story is fascinating. You get to see a side of the wicked witch you never expected. She wasn't wicked. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Fibronurse

2.0 out of 5 stars Less clever than I hoped...
I have never seen the musical version of Wicked, so I thought I would read the book instead. I figured that the book must have been wildly creative and clever to have inspired a... Read more
Published 1 month ago by D. L. SMITH

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