Wicked

By Gregory Maguire

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩶.🤯🤯.💥💥

"... your splendid lone wolf spit and spirit can be harnessed, oh yes it can, and you needn't live a life of unfulfilled rage."

Ugh, man, where to begin?

The world is wide and the story familiar, even if told in a make believe land with witches and wizards and magic elixirs. The story of a girl cast aside because of her color and ability, forced to cater to a world that alienates her any chance it gets, that only sees her differentness as a weapon it can use to destroy her confidence. But despite that, she sees the good in the world, or the good that could be, and pours herself - soul first - into a civil rights fight that isn't hers per se, but may as well have been.

"The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation."

And somehow, in a world so dark and mean, she manages to find so much love at Shiz and beyond: in her friends however annoying they may have been, her roommate however secretive that love may have been, Leer the some she wasn't sure she had, Nanny and her father and NessaRose later in life though it didn't last long, and in Fiyero, her true love, the one man who saw her truly for who she was.

And chasing the love and devotion she gave out to those around her, seeking the validation and the acceptance - worthiness - that the world found in her sister is what led to her untimely demise.

Elphaba lived in a way only she could have, unapologetically and fiercely. She overcame her mother's hatred and her father's fears. She protected the ones she loved, she fought for the ones she understood, she doubted herself often but believed in her motive just the same. She died not because she was green or powerful or even greedy. She died because the little girl inside her wanted too badly to have something of her own, to be thought of by the world the way Fiyero and Dillamond and Glinda saw her: raw and real and loved.

"She was 38 and just realizing what it felt like to have a sense of home...Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven so you may always belong there, bound by guilt, and maybe the cost of belonging is worth it."

While Gregory was unburdened in the creation of the world in which this story exists, he did an excellent job building it out to match the magic of an origin story so familiar to, and treasured by, so many. His portrayal of Elphaba was incredible, insightful at times and heartbreaking at others. There is so much soul put into this book that I' sure the characters are real and out there somewhere waiting for me to pick up the next book so their stories can continue.

Particularly after watching the musical and movie, I greatly appreciate the depth of each character in this story and their carefully crafted roles in the grand scheme of Oz. The book does come with trigger warning from the interwebs, but I found it to be much tamer than what it was made out to be - other than the club scene - and found the sexual and feminine nature of the love between Elphaba and Fiyero actually quite tastefully and sensually written. The depth and breadth of the world and Elphaba's life from birth to death was a pleasant surprise expanding past the musical's range and it was delightful to feel as though I held secret knowledge about her and the other characters while watching the movie.

The story alone gets a 5/5. The writing itself a 4/5: despite the tendency to feel like it's droning on in some places, it's captivating, cultural, and chronic - even if solely for the reputation as the beginning of something bigger than all of Oz: the Wicked phenomenon 20 years in the making.

Audiobook: 19h 42m

Read: 11.24.24? - 11.30.24