I just finished reading Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. I know, I’m behind the times, or this shows just how out of control my reading pile really is. I thought Wicked was a meandering but entertaining backstory for the beloved Wizard of Oz.

It took me 4 or 5 nights to get into this book, probably because I was exhausted and had been playing cards until all hours of the night at camp before I crawled into bed to start reading this book. When I got home from camp I read until the wee hours of the night and then it only took two nights to finish it. At camp, I kept wondering if it was going to get interesting enough to not put the book down – it did, it just took the first 200 pages or so to do that for me.

The book is about the backstory for Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. She was born green – right there that should have been a clue that things would be different for her (and they were). It seems like a lot of the story is driven by a selfish and immature character who wants attention ( of a different sort, not just because she is green).

I like the back story angle of this book, filling in the gaps, explaining why characters are the way they are. But, I thought the book left a little too much unsaid for “Elfie” and why she went along with the Wicked Witch of the West moniker. It didn’t really explain why she became evil. It explained a lot about many of the characters and what could have happened to them before they all appeared in the Wizard of Oz, but it left out a lot of the motivations for the main characters.

I personally preferred the musical – maybe because it had a beginning, middle, and end and it was not was so inexplicably dark and negative. The political angle of the book seems to be left unfinished more than anything else, which is troublesome. Not that I want all of my summer reading to be neat and tidy, but I would like something that makes sense, from a reasonableness/believability standpoint. I think Wicked is worth a read, but if you have a chance see the musical, see it after you read the book!

If you have Wicked thoughts, leave them in the comments – and I mean comments on the book!