Wicked--a book review

Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West—Gregory McGuire


‘wicked is an easy read, based on a familiar story. The author attempts to define what makes a person wicked. what happens to them? What portents, conditions, outside and internal influences make a simple green baby with shark's teeth turn, eventually, into a vengeful, greedy, angry witch. Okay, simple green baby with shark’s teeth is a bit over the top but the author presents her as, well if not lovable, at least believable. She is a horrible baby but grows into an obedient and loving sister. She loves a man; she loses him.

The book doesn't rise to its own challenge. The adolescent discussions of evil are inset and superficial, and the witch's decline from a good and loving sister to her final unhappy self is put down to the lack of forgiveness for causing the death of her lover. Then she refuses to give the same forgiveness to Dorothy for killing her sister. But does her lack of forgiveness cause her descent into jealousy and evil?

It's challenging to take a completely unsympathetic an “historic” character like the wicked witch of the west and make her into a living, breathing, real girl, and then bring her back at the end to her wickedness. The decline didn't work for me. But the story
was relatively entertaining.

It's not a book I would give as a gift, but it will make an interesting book discussion, which is why I read it in the first place.