I was looking forward to reading this because I’m going to see the musical in Boston on November 3rd, and I wanted a more concrete understanding of the story before seeing it.

I enjoyed this take on The Wizard of Oz, as seen from the viewpoint of the Elphaba, later to be known as the Wicked Witch of the West. Elphaba was born in Munchkinland, a province of Oz, daughter to a Unionist minister and his privileged wife, a woman with what some called “loose morals”. She was born with green skin, extremely sharp teeth, and a very temperamental manner. Her father, Frex, thought Elphaba was his curse to bear, and Elphaba grew up feeling this guilt her entire life.

Eventually Elphie, as she was known to her friends, heads off to school at Shiz University in the Emerald City, where she meets Galinda, who later becomes known as Glinda the Good Witch of the North, and some other key figures relating to Oz politics. Elphie has a very strong personality and develops some strong ideals for which she fights. After her sister Nessarose, who was born without arms and eventually becomes the Wicked Witch of the East, joins her at Shiz, and their Ama is killed for witnessing something she shouldn’t, Elphie runs away, fearing that as the headmistress predicted, she’s being used as a pawn for the evil Wizard of Oz.

So Elphie begins a campaign of her own to right what she believes is wrong in the world. Her actions eventually cause the death of her lover and her life seems to go downhill from there.

I really felt for Elphie in this book. Maguire portrays her not as the evil witch we have all become so familiar with through the famous movie, but instead as a misunderstood but headstrong character with strong ideals which she defends to the very end!

BookCrossing journal page for this book

Somewhat interesting, but eventually frustrating. The author didn’t answer any of the questions he posed. What was the book? Why was it important? Was Elphaba’s paranoia really paranoia? What was the connection betweent the “other worlds”? And the list goes on. Not to mention the fact that the author seemed to pick and choose elements he wanted to incorporate and/or ignore from the original book.

The style of the chapters was also frustrating. Every time a new section started, the reader had to figure out what was going on because the author fast-forwarded in time. It’s as if he didn’t know how to write the in-between parts, so he just decided to skip it. It seemed to me the parts he left out could have been the most interesting parts of the narrative.

And while the previous four sections seemed like they could have been editted, the last section where Dorothy arrives seems rushed—rushed to try and find a way to make Elphababa meaner and crazier and rushed in the action up to the Witch’s death. Which by the way, shouldn’t a prequel leave off where the original story began? Just didn’t really work for me in style. In theory, I thought it was great. On that level, I’d have to say it was worth reading.

This is a very clever and incredibly well thought out back story for the life of the Wicked Witch of the West. Unfortunately, it is a way I too long and detailed and doesn’t manage to effectively tie the details to the big picture all the way through the book. The page by page reading experience isn’t boring exactly, but the reader gets mired down in seemingly irrelevant details and only on later reflection does it actually seem clever. Perhaps with some severe editing this book would be a real gem.

Clever stuff. Maguire is a taut writer with good ideas who has spotted a niche in the literary world and filled it admirably. The book starts brilliantly – well-drawn characters and enough tantalizing half-stories to keep people reading, but somehow it doesn’t seem to maintain the magic right through until the end. I felt that the plotlines and characters started to fray around the edges and that the narrative became secondary to political/ethical issues that the author wanted to explore.

Could have been a great book and turned out to be merely good.

This book was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t put it down for days and I finally finished reading it today. It left me with a lot of questions and a lot of pity for poor Elphaba.
The book was so descriptive and well-written that you couldn’t help but feel bad when something bad happened to her or someone close to her died.
The book had a lot of political and religious talk in it as well, which only made it more believable. I imagine some people found that aspect of the book boring, but it needed to be there to provide some movement and meaning to the story.
Even though this book was just another version, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the Wizard of Oz the same way again. And it really makes you wonder what Frank Baum had in mind when he was writing the book.

More clever in concept than in execution. It’s worth a read, though, especially if you want to consider the continued cutural capital Baum’s work—and the film—hold over American culture. Not sure I’ll bother with Son of a Witch, though.

This book was fascinating and complex, both in language and in character. It left me with more questions than answers, probably on purpose.

I’m only through the prolouge and the first chapter.. and I didn’t want to put it down! I -love – the Wizard of Oz and I think this is great. I want to read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister too!!

One of my favorite high school english teachers lent this to me in 1997 or so. I’ve moved it from NY state to England to Ireland to Boston… About time I read it, eh?

I can’t get over the feeling that I have the most insignificant, limited, unpoetic vocabulary in the world when I read this. I mean, some of his word use seems excessive, but it’s mostly PERFECT word choice. Perfect, I tell you.

Have to say, though, now I’ve finished it, that Gregory Macguire’s gift for language limited him in his character dialogue. He seems unable to imagine any character using different words than the ones he might use… An example of what I call “Author’s Conversational Utopia Syndrome,” which is something that should only pop up in excercises and not so much in finished books.

Very engaging book if nothing else…I was interested the whole way through. But once I got to the end I realized I had no clue how all the different subplots really connected, not to mention that the ending was just really anticlimactic (though I guess I kind of expected it…

In a nutshell: Not a bad read, but not mindless fluff either