I have a rule when it comes to novels: If there’s a map of a fictional place in the front, move in the other direction. I can’t think of a book since the Lord of the Rings series that had such a map at its start and didn’t end up the worse for it.
The fact that the author took time to make up a country or a region or a continent or whatever does not impress me; it tells me he was more enamored with the creation of irrelevant details than he was with things like plot, character development, or themes. This preference for creation over craft bedevils the fantasy genre as a whole, and it’s the reason why I rarely bother to read anything from that section of the store.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Wicked is a parallel novel, telling the “other side” of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by providing a backstory for the Wicked Witch of the West, as well as her sister, trying to make them sympathetic characters. The Wicked Witch of the West is given a name, Elphaba, which in and of itself has a mythology in the novel, and she’s a Hermione Granger sort of child, an intellectual who takes up the causes of the oppressed; she’s shunned from birth because she was born with green skin (a point which is explained later in the book in what I found to be a very unsatisfying way), and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that until her death she has major daddy issues.
Wicked struck me wrong in multiple ways. Reusing someone else’s characters and setting is unoriginal; recasting them and altering facts or personality traits is unethical. Maguire alters entire characters and turns chunks of Baum’s original story on its head. He also clearly intended for this to be a novel of ideas – it’s a superficial one at best – and again, if you’re going to do that, make up your own universe first. Wicked‘s text also includes some awkward descriptions of sex and bodily functions, almost as if the book was written by a teenaged boy or someone who had that particular species’ fascination with those two subjects and unfamiliarity with the former. I admit that it’s not easy to write about sex – there’s an entire award devoted to the problem – but Maguire’s style is just painful, from perfunctory descriptions of the mechanics of sex to oddly jarring mentions of defecation or regurgitation.
The novel moves quickly despite some clunky prose and the aforementioned problems, because the material itself is so lightweight. I don’t mind lightweight reading if it’s entertaining and was intended to be lightweight, but Wicked is almost devoid of humor and suffers under the weight of some of its pretensions, including an explicitly stated question on the nature of evil that is only sparingly addressed. I’m tilting at a windmill given the book’s success and the way it has opened up a cottage industry for Maguire, who has since written similar books revising Snow White and Cinderella to his liking, but I’d like to see someone dump some water on Maguire before he desecrates another classic work by writing an adolescent retelling.
At the time this book came out I was working for a large bookstore chain and was given an advance copy. I found it to be a very lightweight, bore of a book and so I was not surprised in the least when it became a best seller.
If someone needs more Oz stories L. Frank Baum wrote at least a dozen of them, or there’s HBO’s Oz which is something else entirely.
I’ve never picked this up, because I don’t see the difference between it and Three Little Pig’s colored story told from the incarcerated wolf’s POV. It didn’t seem like novel material, so I don’t get why this should either. (Plus, as someone who can’t come up with a decent original idea for a story to save his life, I admit I’m bitter at people who take and run with other people’s ideas.)
I liked Wide Sargasso Sea, though I suppose that’s removed enough from Jane Eyre to not count as a recasting a la Wicked.
And I don’t remember there being a map.
Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver and the rest of the System of the World books had facinating maps of London and Europe in the 1600s. The maps of London were especially helpful because so much of the plot involved people moving in and around the city. I think a well used map can help a place become an important character in a book.
Taking someone else’s story and re-telling it isn’t always a bad idea–Shakespeare did it, and no one seems to mind.
But Wicked is an example of a genre I intensely dislike–telling a story from the villain’s point of view in order to make him/her sympathetic. John Gardner’s Grendel and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres are two other examples. All these novels rely almost exclusively on pop psychoanalysis, specifically on the notion that “evil” actions are the result of childhood traumas.
Of course, sometimes evil actions are the result of past traumas. But these novels reduce a very complex idea to a simple cause and effect that removes all character agency and results in a very predictable plot.
I think Watership Down had a map, and that was a pretty amazing book, so I guess that’s one exception.
Dune had a map and I think the novel greatly benefited from the depth of detail in the world.
Keith, your vacation cost me 12 bucks. I normally rely on your reviews before purchasing a book, Jasper Fforde’s work, Windup Bird Chronicles, Harry Potter (yea, I was a bit slow on that one) and others. Unfortunately, you decided to go on vacation and I bought Wicked a day before you posted your review. Long story short, I hate it. I find it boring and contrived. As the story starts at the birth of “Elphaba” you’re left waiting for the actual back story to begin for nearly a quarter of the book also I didn’t think the book merited a “Reader’s Group Guide” it wasn’t all that deep. Then again I don’t think all that highly of readers groups so that might just be me.
“The fact that the author took time to make up a country or a region or a continent or whatever does not impress me; it tells me he was more enamored with the creation of irrelevant details than he was with things like plot, character development, or themes. ”
When the details are indeed irrelevant, I agree with you, but many stories are best told when set in another region, world, etc. In these stories, the fantasy world itself is important enough that it needs to be as well thought out as any character; otherwise, the novel can fall apart as easily as when an important character is woefully underdeveloped. The key to a truly good fantasy novel (and I’ve read enough to know that, as you suggest, the vast majority are trash, though to my mind often enjoyable trash) is that the author develops the plot, characters, and themes fully in addition to the world; the two, you must admit, are hardly mutually exclusive.
Let us take, for example, the Harry Potter series (no, it didn’t have a map, but the map is only one possible aspect of the creation of an alternate world). J.K. Rowling spent an awful lot of time on the creation of the details of her fantasy world; many of the details were arguably irrelevant. Without these details, though, her books would not have been nearly as good, as her world would not have capture the imaginations of her readers so powerfully. At the same time, the books would undoubtedly have flopped even with the wonderful world she created had she not also developed the plots, characters, and themes as deeply and skillfully as she did.
On a side note, I would highly recommend Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series to you (Small Gods is a good one to start with); at the very least, I think you will find it lightweight reading that is humorous and enjoyable; personally, I think he’s an equal to Wodehouse, though stylistically different.
I’m a week behind on this, but whoever lumped this in with the “villain’s point of view” books missed the mark; Maguire reframed the whole story to the point where Elphaba’s actions really don’t justify calling her a “villain” at all. So it’s more of a retelling than a psychoanalysis. I actually thought the biggest problem with the book (which was okay–I kind of liked the idea and story but loathe his writing style) was that he departed from the story SO much.
That said, the Broadway show, if you’re into that sort of thing, is completely unfaithful to the book and fantastic.