The Broadway show is on tour across the country -- even if
you don't get to see it, WICKED is an engrossing
read to finish off the summer...
Following the traditions of Gabriel Garca Marquz, John
Gardner and J.R.R. Tolkien, Wicked is a richly woven tale
that takes us to the other, darker side of the rainbow as
novelist Gregory Maguire chronicles the Wicked Witch of the
West's odyssey through the complex world of Oz -- where
people call you wicked if you tell the truth.
Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little
girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is
born with emerald-green skin -- no easy burden in a land as
mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not
strong enough to explain or to overcome the natural
disasters of flood and famine. But Elphaba is smart, and by
the time she enters the university in Shiz, she becomes a
member of a charmed circle of Oz' most promising young
citizens.
Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are
everywhere. Animals -- those creatures with voices, souls
and minds -- are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba,
green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect
the Animals -- even it means combating the mysterious
Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at
romance. Even wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find
herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And
she can even make herself glad for that young girl from
Kansas.
In Wicked, Gregory Maguire has taken the largely unknown
world of Oz and populated it with the power of his own
imagination. Fast-paced, fantastically real and supremely
entertaining, this is a novel of vision and re-vision. Oz
never will be the same again.
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