Friday, April 01, 2016

Wicked

by Gregory Maguire

I'm not a fan of the Oz books. I've read a couple, but they didn't impress me enough to read the series. So why did I grab this volume, a re-imagining of the Wicked With of the West? I have to confess that I succumbed to advertising. When the musical came to town, years back, the simple graphic of the green woman smirking under the brow of her hat grabbed my attention. I heard a bit about the story and the idea of the young witch, Elphaba, going to boarding school with Glinda, the Good Witch, intrigued me. It was a low level intrigue, of course, so instead of seeing the play or at least hunting down a copy of the book, I merely grabbed a copy for $1 at the book sale.

Anyway, the book. I found the beginning rather unpleasant--dark and dismal. The characters weren't all that interesting or sympathetic. But the story took off for me in the second section and I was drawn in by the milieu. But then, at the end, I again didn't care for where the plot and characters were going. I think the main problem was that Wicked is an exploration of the nature and definition of evil. For me, as a Christian, evil is no big mystery. 1) We're bad, God's good. 2) Jesus saved us, God forgives us. 3) We try to be good. 4) If we fail--especially in those grey areas, go back to 2).

 It is worth checking out, however.
LibraryThing link

Labels: ,


Comments: Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]